[Sca-cooks] OT OOP balls and brass monkeys

[James Prescott]

At 16:51 +0100 2001-05-15, Christina Nevin wrote:
> 	The saying "it's so cold out there it could freeze the balls off a
> 	brass monkey" came from when they had old cannons like ones
> 	used in the Civil War. The cannonballs were stacked in a pyramid
> 	formation, called a brass monkey. When it got extremely cold
> outside,
> 	they would crack and break off... Thus the saying.
>
> Item # 94,583 Tina's Memory Bank of Useless Information
> Actually, this has an older, English nautical origin - the 'brass monkey'
> was a brass ring that was placed around a pyramid of cannon balls to stop
> them rolling around the decks. When it got too cold, the metal ring would
> contract (as metal is wont to do in cold), toppling the cannon balls off the
> brass monkey and thus giving rise to the saying.


I'm going to raise my little "is this another false folk etymology?"
flag.

The OED gives no derivation for the phrase.  The earliest OED
citation featuring balls and brass monkeys is 1937.  In 1928 it
is tail and brass monkey.  The earliest citation, in 1835, is
"...like a monkey in frosty weather", no mention of balls or
other body parts.

There does not seem to be any definition of 'monkey' in the OED to
correspond to a brass ring [sic] placed around a pyramid of cannon
balls.  There _is_ a species of cannon called a brass monkey (17th
C).  Many things nautical are called 'monkey', so if such a brass
thingy existed it could have been called a monkey.

I've read a lot of Napoleonic era (and earlier and later) nautical
writing and don't remember any such brass thingy being mentioned.
Shot was normally stored in the hold, and when action was likely
was transported to the guns in long bags (canvas or net), and was
stored in a 'garland' next to the gun.  The garland was built into
the inside of the hull of the ship between guns, was of wood, and
often had depressions to hold individual cannon balls.  A bit like
the plastic egg trays built into some refrigerators.

There is a reference to shot garlands for land batteries as iron
or wooden stands on which shot are 'piled'.  It is possible that
such a stand could have been called a monkey, and could have been
made of brass.  No nautical connection.

Partridge (source of the 1937 citation in the OED) also gives no
derivation for the 'brass monkey' phrase.

I'm skeptical about cannon balls ever being stacked in pyramids
except on shore or perhaps for show when at anchor.  Any such
retaining brass thingy would either be solid with individual
holes (15 for a triangular pyramid with 5 shot along a side at
the base), or a simple empty triangle or square.  In this case
the lowest tier of cannon balls would rest on the deck.

And finally (and to my mind conclusively):

A quick trip to the physics texts shows that the differential
linear thermal expansions of brass and iron, over a range of
(say) 80 Celsius degrees (+104 F to -40 F) is about 0.05%.  If
we have a pyramid one yard on a side, that's a differential
thermal expansion (contraction) of 0.5 millimetres.  That's
not enough to topple anything.

Colour me (extremely) skeptical.


Thorvald