The barrel was the eighteenth-century quartermaster's basic unit of measure. Everything the Continental Army ate, drank, fired, or carried came in a cask, keg, or hogshead — salt pork by the barrel, salt beef by the barrel, hardtack biscuit by the cask, flour and peas and beans in larger casks, vinegar against scurvy in smaller ones, rum and beer in tightly-hooped watertight wet cooperage, and gunpowder in small lashed kegs sealed with pitch. The army moved on these the way a modern army moves on shipping containers. Coopering was so essential that every regimental supply train included its own cooper, and the army's Quartermaster General — Nathanael Greene held the post from 1778 to 1780 — spent most of his time chasing barrels: building them, finding them, moving them, replacing the ones that had been ruined, lost, or "skimmed" by camp followers and unreliable contractors. This twelve-piece W. Britain set covers all three families of period cooperage: white cooperage (the straight-sided pine churns, buckets, and tubs for solids and semi-solids), dry cooperage (the smaller kegs and casks for dry stores not requiring watertight construction), and wet cooperage (the iron-hooped watertight barrels for liquids and gunpowder). It pairs naturally with the Regal Enterprises Knox's Artillery Regiment and its 6-pounder gun (whose powder kegs are exactly the small wet-cooperage barrels in the set), the K&C W.G.C. Commandant Major Caleb Gibbs at the head of the Guard that protected the army's treasury and stores, and the matte 1/30 Continental Line officer standing at ease at his headquarters supply post.

Set Number: 53037 / W. Britain / 1/30 (60mm) scale / matte finish / 12-piece set