A tierce is one/third of a hogshead, while a barrel is typically half a
hogshead. Two hogsheads make a tun.
But unfortunately it's not quite that simple. Traditionally a tun contained
a ton of wine -- that is the liquid measure and the weight measure were
supposed to be the same for a tun of wine, but they rarely were in reality.
Likewise a hogshead of tobacco started out at about 500 pounds in the 1630s.
At that time four hogsheads were rated as a ton of freight -- which was just
about right. But over time the size of the hogshead was increased and the
amount of tobacco prized (that's tobacco speak for squeezed) into it
increased so that by the Revolution a typical hogshead weighed nearly 1300
pounds.
While we're on the subject of confusing measures, the weight of the
container -- referred to as the tare -- also varied from barrel to barrel
and hogshead to hogshead. So in practice you always needed to know both the
gross weight and the net weight of a container and its content to be sure of
what you were paying for goods and what you paid for packaging.
As I recall a barrel of flour was supposed to be 31.5 gallons, but somebody
will need to double check that before they rely upon my memory.
Besides the OED, I'd recommend two books on mensuration by Ronald E. Zupco.
I forget the exact titles, but its something like _The Handbook of Medieval
Metrology_ or maybe _Dictionary of Medieval Metrology_. The other is
something like _A Dictionary of English Weights and Measures_.
-----Original Message-----
From: Ronald L. Whitaker [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Saturday, 26 January 2002 4:19 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: early 19th C. packing crates
Peter identified such containers as tierce, barrel, hogshead and tun. Would
a
typical storage reference been in wet or dry measure and what would have
been
the relative capacity of each of those containers mentioned?
Ron
Joe Mosier wrote:
> As Peter Bergstrom says barrels of various sizes were the norm. In fact
> they were normative enough that goods packed in another fashion were so
> labeled in newspaper ads. The Norfolk Herald regularly listed cargos in
> their shipping news section. Dry goods from Europe would usually be
> indicated in a listing that might read: "ship Paragon, Dickson, 52 days
from
> Liverpool, salt & crates, Wm. Pennock"
>
> Joe Mosier
> Library Archivist
> Chrysler Museum
> Norfolk, Virginia
>
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