Saturday afternoon I peered down the hatch and into Lynx’s stateroom with its paneled bulkheads and plush curtained berths.

There, sitting on the floor amid squares of tin foil and piles of black powder, were Saul Lipton, 25, of Chicago, and Melissa Witmer, 30, from Lancaster, Pa.

They were making the ammo for that evening’s battle sail with Lady Washington, Amazing Grace and Hawaiian Chieftain. And they were just a notch too happy.

“We just figured out a way to pack them tighter in the gun, which makes them louder,” Saul said.

Louder is better, much, much better, on a battle sail. In the absence of deadly bits of metal, it’s volume, quantity, spirit and snappy maneuvering that determine the winner. So the two were manufacturing faux ammo as fast as possible.

“Here I am,” Witmer said, “a Mennonite from Lancaster, rolling shot on a Tall Ship.”

But did their big bang theory work?

That evening, we found the longest line in Victoria. We strolled down to the houseboats for dinner at Barb’s Fish and Chips take-out and waited an hour to place our order and another 30 minutes to pick it up. (Yes, it was worth it.)

That gave us plenty of time to listen to the exchange of black powder courtesies going on during the battle sail. It went like this: “Pow. Wham. Bam. WHOMPA.”

Score for Lipton and Witmer’s sound track.

As the ships sailed back into harbor, we stood at the end of the docks, waving and cheering for them.

“Fire on us!” we called to Lynx’s crew.

“Can’t!” they hailed us back. “We’re out of shot!”

Then they taught us a neat trick.

“Bang!” they yelled at us in unison.

“Bang!” we all yelled back.

Remember that, if you should find yourself on Ruston Way without a cannon during Thursday’s Parade of Sail.

You can bet Lipton and Witmer will have plenty of tightly packed shot at hand, and they’ll take aim at any provocateurs ashore.