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If anyone receives the quartely magazine The Artilleryman, this quarter's issue has a GREAT article on artillery accidents. Some common denominators in those accidents are: homemade cannons made from pipes, over-loading the gun with too much gun powder and jamming objects down the barrel. Only one or two accidents involved proper loading, quality reproductions or originals (NOT stupid pipe guns) and people not cramming things down the barrel (in one accident, some fools stuffed the gun with bread!).
This goes back to my earlier comment about pressures building up behind the "projectile"... if there is nothing but powder in the barrel, and assuming we are not talkin about homemade pipe guns, there should be virtually no pressure in the tube.
On the other hand, anything that stops or even significantly slows down the gases produced by the burning powder will result in a dramatic increase in pressure with the result that you can have a split tube..
You see evidence of this in the war, especially the naval war in which naval smoothbore canon (Confederate) were converted to rifled. The projectile then fit much more snugly and as a result, many of the canon exploded with significant casualties... close to an exploding canon is notsome you wnat to be...close being a relative term here..my definition is about a quarter mile or so..LOL