The gun room on a ship is not used to store weapons, but is a dining area for junior officers. On early ships, it was used for ammunition storage and crew accommodation. Modern gun rooms are noisy and busy during firing, with shells transported by elevators and loaded by crew members.
The gun room is typically the junior officer’s mess area on a ship and not the type of room used to store weapons as the name implies. On early wooden sailing ships, the gun room was the accommodation for the ship’s gunner and crew, was an area for ammunition and weapons storage, and was commonly found on the ship’s lower decks. The weapons room is used by junior officers holding the rank of lieutenant or below, but does not consist of non-commissioned officers. The clutter area reserved for senior officers is called the guard room and also does not contain firearms. On modern battleships, the area inside the large turrets is also known as the gun room.
On early naval ships, the gun room was used to store ammunition and weapons for the guns on the ship’s gun deck. Located at the stern or rear of the ship, ammunition was protected for the length of the ship and easily accessible to crewmen tasked with loading the guns. In normal sailing times, the gun room served as a dining area for petty officers. The location of the room at the rear of the ship made it somewhat cluttered and the large wooden assembly comprising the control stick for the ship’s rudder swept across the ceiling of the room as the ship’s wheel was turned.
The area within the modern gun room can be very noisy, hot and busy once the ship starts firing the large deck guns. Noise inside the turret restricts communications to hand signals. In the common configuration, the large shells are transported from ammunition holds in the belly of the ship to the gun turrets by means of large chain elevators. When the breech of the big gun is opened, the round is loaded onto a loading chute that directs it into the breech of the gun. A large ram pushes the shell into the gun while a crew member makes sure the shell is seated correctly.
This is all followed by two or three bags of gunpowder being sent from the bottom of the ship and fed into the gun. Once loaded into the turrets by the crew, the gun is brought into firing position and aimed. The weapon is fired by a crew member located inside the ship’s central compartments pulling an actual trigger-like component resembling a pistol grip. The gun is fired and the process is repeated inside the gun room until a ceasefire is called by the ship’s captain.
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