27. Since the Days of the American Revolution, Through the Civil War and Beyond, America Used Child Sailors
Warships are exceptionally confined places with cramped spaces. That was even more so in the wooden ships of the Age of Sail. Those tasked with rushing gunpowder from the Powder Room to the waiting guns had to climb up and down narrow stairs. They also had to run through tight and low corridors that were full of all kinds of projections for sailors to bump their heads into and knock themselves senseless. To be big in such small confines was a liability.
An average-sized adult would find it difficult to sprint back and forth through the limited spaces of a wooden warship. A smaller child, by contrast, could do so far more easily. So children, known as powder monkeys, were tasked with rushing gunpowder from ship magazines to the cannons. The British Royal Navy, and later the United States Navy from the days of the Revolution through the Civil War and beyond, employed boys known as powder monkeys as members of gun crews.
