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The Tragic History of the U.S. Child Warriors

Khalid Elhassan June 9, 2020 34 min

35. Ranking Child Sailors

A black child sailor with two Union officers during the Civil War. Heritage Auction

The US Navy employed a ranking system for its child crewmembers, literally and officially labeled “Boy Sailors”. At the bottom of the heap were powder monkeys, the youngest and smallest crewmembers. Next came Boy 3^rd Class, who typically served as stewards or in clerical capacity, often in port.

As they grew up and gained experience, the child sailors could rise to Boy 2^nd Class, then Boy 1^st Class. At age eighteen, they automatically became rated as ordinary seamen, receiving the same pay and becoming subjected to the same discipline as regular adult sailors.

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.