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The Tragic History of the U.S. Child Warriors

Khalid Elhassan June 9, 2020 34 min

39. Sometimes It Is Bad to be Big

Nineteenth century leather buckets, used for transporting gunpowder from ship magazines to the guns. International Military Antiques

Fighting ships are exceptionally confined places with crammed spaces. Even more so in the wooden ships of centuries past. 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 full of all kinds of projections for sailors to bump their heads into and knock themselves out.

Being big in such small confines was a liability. An average-sized adult would have a difficult time sprinting back and forth through such limited spaces. A 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.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.