Ok this has been nagging at my mind all day. Ive been looking at paintings and images of a great deal of warships, british, swedish, dutch, french, spanish. and on all of the pictures i notice that the inside of the gunport is painted "Red", ive looked at several recreations and original ships HMS Surprise/rose refit and HMS victory. And you know what? its always the color RED, or most of the time anyways, so does anyone actually know why the inside of the cannon ports were for the most part painted red, regardless of the ships overall paint scheme?