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Wednesday, 12 Mar 2025
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From Wikipedia:
Nearly all historians and etymologists consider this story to be a myth. This story has been discredited by the U.S. Department of the Navy,[16] etymologist Michael Quinion, and the Oxford English Dictionary (OED).[17]
They give five main reasons:
The OED does not record the term “monkey” or “brass monkey” being used in this way.
The purported method of storage of cannonballs (“round shot”) is simply false. The shot was not stored on deck continuously on the off-chance that the ship might go into battle. Indeed, decks were kept as clear as possible.
Furthermore, such a method of storage would result in shot rolling around on deck and causing a hazard in high seas. The shot was stored on the gun or spar decks, in shot racks—wooden planks with holes bored into them, known as shot garlands in the Royal Navy, into which round shot was inserted for ready use by the gun crew.
Shot was not left exposed to the elements where it could rust. Such rust could lead to the ball not flying true or jamming in the barrel and exploding the gun. Indeed, gunners would attempt to remove as many imperfections as possible from the surfaces of balls.
The physics does not stand up to scrutiny. The contraction of both balls and plate over the range of temperatures involved would not be particularly large. The effect claimed could be reproduced under laboratory conditions with objects engineered to a high precision for this purpose, but it is unlikely it would ever have occurred in real life aboard a warship.
The phrase is most likely just a humorous reference to emphasize how cold it is.[17]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brass_monkey_(colloquialism)#Supposed_etymology
Yeah, not true though.
Brass monkey, that funky monkey
This one’s bullshit but balls to the wall is a legit steam engine term
Literally everything about this post is wrong
Shot was stored bellow deck hence why children were oftd used as ammo fetchers
This seems like a terrible way to store cannonballs on a ship.
But also, I know nothing about storing cannonballs on a ship. So maybe it’s the best way. Idk.
Are these also “witch’s tits in a brass bra?” Because that would make so much sense.
Beastie Boys?
That funky monkey
Contraction difference between steel and brass from -40c (try to sail a boat in minus 40)…. lol to the hottest day on record, 56c. Is 96c. The ~200 mm wide brass monkey would shrink 0.17mn more than the balls. People have no clue how small differences in thermal coefficient is.
Is this the r/factchecking sub?
Im using it!
Finally gained some cerebral awareness.
Thank you my friend!
Then, is this where “cold as balls” comes from?
Weird quote, I would have went with “cold enough to freeze the monkey’s balls”
Brass monkey that funky monkey
This pic was taken from on board The Golden Hind, a ship in Brixham, UK.
What a funky monkey.
I first thought this was funny and interesting until I read the comments. Facts
😭🤣
That funky monkey.
I can still hear Col. Blake on MASH advising everyone to keep their brass monkey in tonight.
The fact that I didn’t know the origin of this phrase is why I never use it. I don’t really understand why people use phrases they don’t fully understand.
Cannonballs would never have been stored like this for extended periods for obvious reasons. Like rough seas.
That funky monkey!
I always heard “it’s colder than a witches tit in a brass bra”.
You fight like a dairy farmer!
Plot twist: bored sailors came up with the concept of a brass monkey storing cannonballs just so they could make that joke.
The most efficient packing of cannonballs in a ship still holds a special place in my heart as a chemist:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler_conjecture
It’s wild to me that a mathematician in the 17th century also described how molecules arrange themselves in some structures.
What is actually interesting about this picture is that the cannonballs in a brass monkey have given rise to a problem in mathematics called the ‘sphere packing problem’ that is being solved even today.
Sometime in the 16th century, a British explorer asked the mathematician Thomas Harriot what would be the optimal way to stack cannonballs within the frame. The question then got passed to astronomer Johannes Kepler. He published that the optimal way to stack spheres was in the shape of a pyramid and the spheres would occupy 74% of the available space. This is the reason cannonballs in a brass monkey, or oranges and apples in your local market are usually ordered as pyramids. While we know this is the best way, we still don’t know why this is the best way.
Today mathematicians are attempting to understand this in higher dimensions.
I’m sure someone, somewhere, said this about this device at some time and it got around.
It’s interesting to focus on naval ships when it’s just as likely to have been used in coastal cannon emplacements where you are not worried about cluttering the deck.
As a random tidbit, if you’ve ever heard the phrase “son of gun” as somewhat of an insult or reaction to someone’s behavior, it has a similar phrase origin that people want to argue if it’s real or not.
During the late 1700s and early 1800s it wasn’t too unusual for Naval captains to bring their spouses with them during local operations. The story goes that one captain brought his heavily pregnant wife with him during a local voyage where the crew would be firing the ships guns a lot for training. The idea was that the cannon fire would induce labor, and it did. The story also said this practice was relatively common for a while, and other women late in labor would try to attend cannon practice. Then the phrase “he’s a son of a gun” came to be associated with boys born from labor induced by artillery.
Never once heard that saying before. Heard it’s “freezing my balls off”