Magazine is a military and naval term for a protected building or storage room for ammunition. The term comes from an Arabic word meaning storehouse. The ammunition supply chamber of a repeating rifle or machine gun is also called a magazine.
Shore magazines are usually concrete buildings shaped like beehives. They are half buried in the ground and are covered with earth. Some powder magazines are built in many compartments, each of which is covered with a light roof. If an explosion occurs, the damage will be confined to a small space and the force will move upward when the roof gives way.
On ships, magazines are placed as far as possible from the engines and firerooms and far below the water line. They are made up of many watertight rooms with steel walls. In the tropics, magazines are cooled by ventilators that pipe cool air from a refrigerator. Other pipes take away hot air.
