Muzzle loaders and aiming downward?

[Husar]

A question that I have had for some time but came up again when I saw a pirate movie lately where the captain aimed a small deck cannon downward to sink his own ship so that the crew would either capture the enemies' galleon or die trying. Well, old muskets and cannons were loaded from the muzzle and the ammunition was usually round if I'm not mistaken. Now if you put a round ball into a long pipe or barrel and let the barrel point downwards, the ball will fall out of it on the lower end of the barrel. Now of course under certain conditions pressure etc could prevent that but they should also prevent you from loading the gun if they applied here. So I wonder whether this was a problem back then or whether there was anything that prevented muntion from simply falling out of the barrel when pointed downwards?

Would be quite bad to have a hill position and not to be able to use muskets because the munition always falls onto the ground before you can fire.

edit: I just remembered they had those long sticks to stuff the munition into the barrel, guess friction stopped it from moving around until the shot was fired.