LionsRoar Posted March 23, 2016 Share Posted March 23, 2016 Lord Horatio Nelson began his naval career at age 10 as a Powder Monkey, and by the age of 18 he had sailed 40,000 miles of ocean... 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mouse of war Posted March 23, 2016 Share Posted March 23, 2016 I'm not sure if Nelson was ever a powder monkey Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
admin Posted March 23, 2016 Share Posted March 23, 2016 I'm not sure if Nelson was ever a powder monkey he was a cabin boy for some time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LionsRoar Posted March 23, 2016 Author Share Posted March 23, 2016 The photo is of a powder monkey taken in the last days of tall sailing warships. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pugwash and seaman Posted May 8, 2016 Share Posted May 8, 2016 Nelson was never a powder monkey.this was a crew position held by ships boys from the lower classes. The power monkeys had to get power from the magizine and bring to the gun crews.the powder was placed in little sack bags before the battle started and was carried in the powder monkeys wooden container to the gun.nelson was the son of a gentleman and when to sea on his uncles warship he held the rank of midshipmen the lowest officers rank in the royal naval. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fluffy Fishy Posted June 10, 2016 Share Posted June 10, 2016 There wasn't ever such thing as a powder monkey, its a modern colloquialism. Powder runners on the other hand were what their name implied, they ran powder from the various magazines to the guns. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ObiQuiet Posted June 10, 2016 Share Posted June 10, 2016 FWIW, the OED has citations before 1815, see def b which is for the nautical usages: http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/149156?redirectedFrom=powder+monkey#eid The citations in (a) seem to me to be more likely based on powdered wigs, than gunpowder. See also the Google n-gram chart which is sort-of-interesting for data of this age, but questionable given the sparse data set before 1900, though there is a definite up-tick in 1870's. (Might be wise to check the alternative spellings and upper-lower case forms) And, a list of book results before 1820. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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