Re: Depth Charges & Fire Barrels
If you're interested in pre-WW1 depth charges, Hornblower and the Atropos (IIRC) includes something similar (used in underwater demolitions given that there was no submarine threat in that era) - and may give some idea of the challenges they were up against (air supply to the fuse, avoiding premature detonation … waterproofing, that sort of thing).
From what I can see, fire barrels seem to be some sort of anti-pursuit mine - I've never heard of them being used historically (not even by Thomas Cochrane who could well have been expected to love the idea) but they don't seem like a massive tech jump. You'd probably have to use a time-fuse and need the enemy to be alarmingly close before they could be deployed though.
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