Cannon Balls

[kronckew]

A Titbit of information you may not have known about:

[toaster5sqn]

Do you really believe that a rolling and pitching ship would store cannonballs in such an unstable manner?
I've read that the whole story was made up in Victorian times to sanitize the obvious biologically reference. The saying is believed to have been inspired by the popularity of brass castings of the three wise monkeys (see no evil, hear no evil, say no evil).

Robert

[adrian]

I too believe this to be an 'urban myth' and some years ago I read a detailed explanation that debunked it very convincingly. In all my research and reading I have never found anything that even remotely supports the 'myth' either.

[Rick]

Engaged, a shot garland like this would spill the top round off the pile on near impact creating yet another problem rolling around on the deck for the poor bastards who were serving the great Guns.

[kronckew]

The real brass monkeys:

[M ELEY]

I agree with the stacking of cannon balls on a ship seeming impractical, but the pyramidal stacking of cannonballs was definitely a practice for land installations and in the field. Cannon 'stations' along the river of some cities in Virginia have yielded cannonballs buried in the earth still in their original stacked pile. So maybe the story might be right, but not in a naval setting???

[Jim McDougall]

Well noted Capn! It seems stacking of cannon balls was common overall in static settings as there would be no dynamics causing shifts of the stack.

It seems the naval setting is simply a popular conduit for popular adaptions of phrases, sayings and various colloquial figurative metaphors etc. from the days of trade in the age of sail.

The incredibly tenuous root of the entire 'brass monkey' thing goes back to the sayings of Confucious, which likely entered the western culture through various channels linked to trade with the East. 'Hear no evil; speak no evil; see no evil" ended up related to monkeys via (as often the case) translation errors and play on word aspects common in colloquial speech.

This led to the popular brass monkey figures sometime early in 19th c. which became well known and the expressions referring to various anatomical elements ....mostly hair, nose etc. The 'balls' of course ended up in the baser maritime slang.
Here of course, colorful language was often applied to the key dynamic of weather notable to ships and the sailors.

It is typically fascinating to see the aspects of the general application of these kinds of colloquialisms and to the case of 'collectors terms' which add so much 'dimension' to our study of historical arms.

Regarding the brass monkeys etc. the root of all these variations was likely the proverbs of Confucious and his THREE WISE MONKEYS....but gotta admit these idioms are a lot more colorful than some boring proverb from Confucious. We have a lot of 'em here in Texas!

[kronckew]

You might come across a 4th monkey on occasion - the 'Do no evil' one...