In the days of the Merovingians, the Carolingians, and the later Hanseatic League; cargo shipping was taking on a new form. From the Viking knarr a new type of ship had developed. Known as Cogs, these ships had much higher gunwales than a Viking ship, and significantly more cargo space, but were still open to the weather. Valuable cargo was being shipped more and more often, and damages from salt water entering over the sides of the ship led to the use of barrels to protect the cargo and keep it dry and safe.
For reasons lost in the mists of time, these barrels, at some point, came to be referred to as “hogsheads.” Hogsheads are a development that would outlast the Cog itself. Hogsheads continued to be employed in newer even larger ships known as Hulks which had developed into seagoing craft from river barges. Cogs and Hulks plied the seas right up until the invention of the caravel and the dawning of the modern age of sail. Hogsheads were still being used in the late 18th and early 19th Centuries to protect cargo. Distinctive types of hogsheads developed and were used for shipping sugar and tobacco from plantations in the New World. Tobacco hogsheads are identifiable by their large size and wooden rather than iron banding. They were not considered reusable and were generally broken up for sale as firewood after arrival at the European tobacco factories.
Most other types of Hogsheads were often reused, and were considered a military asset worthy of inventorying and repairing. Records from the time of the American Revolution give us a good idea about types and values of hogsheads, but still, no one seems to know where the name originates. Like the finer details of hulks and cogs, this bit of information has not come down to us in any written record as far as anyone has yet discovered. Some shipwrights and coopers left us their tools to ponder, but not the origin of the word hogshead, or (as far as I know) plans to build a cog or a hulk. Archeology has been helpful on ship design, but some mysteries will always remain.
