If you are talking about gunpowder it would actually explode per-se. You would need a sort of container that would spark the gunpowder at the same time or at least a large amount of it to create an explosion. If you are referring to Assins Creed 4 or any work that depicts Teach, he has fuses in his beard which would be slow burning fuses used to prime cannons, which would not explode as that would be rather counter-productive (exploding fuse + exploding cannon + wooden ship = bad idea).