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The Tragic History of the U.S. Child Warriors

Khalid Elhassan June 9, 2020 34 min

38. The Powder Monkeys

A powder monkey, left, in the gun deck of a ship of the line. Wikimedia

The British Royal Navy, and later the United States Navy, employed boys known as powder monkeys as members of gun crews. Taking advantage of their small size, the child sailor would rush ferry gunpowder from the magazine to the gun deck in leather buckets, usually two at a time.

During combat, they were just as exposed to danger as were all other sailors aboard ship, regardless of age. Indeed, considering that they were scurrying about carrying gunpowder liable to go off if it came into contact with any spark or shard of flaming timber or scorching shell fragment, the powder monkeys might have been at greater risk than the rest of the crew.

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.