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 Armament
on Tall Ships
Every
sailing ship had to have cannon for protection. Cannon of the
times required round iron cannonballs. The master wanted to
store the cannonballs such that they could be of instant use
when needed, yet not roll around the gun deck. The solution
was to stack them up in a square-based pyramid next to the
cannon. The top level of the stack had one ball, the next
level down had four, the next had nine, the next had sixteen,
and so on. Four levels would provide a stack of 30
cannonballs.
The only
problem was how to keep the bottom level from sliding out from
under the weight of the higher levels. To do this, they
devised a small brass plate, “brass monkey,” with one rounded
indentation for each cannonball in the bottom layer. Brass
was used because the cannonballs wouldn’t rust to the “brass
monkey,” but would rust to an iron one.
When
temperature falls, brass contracts in size faster than iron.
As it got cold on the gun decks, the indentations in the brass
monkey would get smaller than the iron cannonballs they were
holding. If the temperature got cold enough, the bottom balls
would pop out of the indentations, spilling the entire pyramid
over the deck. Thus, it was quite literally, “cold enough to
freeze the balls off a brass monkey.”
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