Good Day All!
 
I was going to wait until Friday, but seeing how it's "hump" day, I
thought I'd break up the week and post this little tidbit of information
that one of the engineers that I work with sent me....
 
Steve
 
It was necessary to keep a good supply of cannon balls near the cannon
on old war ships.
But how to prevent them from rolling about the deck was the problem. The
best storage
method devised was to stack them as a square based pyramid, with one
ball on top, resting
on four, resting on nine, which rested on sixteen. 

Thus, a supply of 30 cannon balls could be stacked in a small area right
next to the cannon.
There was only one problem -- how to prevent the bottom layer from
sliding/rolling from
under the others. 

The solution was a metal plate with 16 round indentations, called, for
reasons unknown,
a Monkey.  But, if this plate were made of iron, the iron balls would
quickly rust to it. The
solution to the rusting problem was to make them of brass - hence, Brass
Monkeys.
 
Few landlubbers realize that brass contracts much more and much faster
than iron when
chilled.  Consequently, when the temperature dropped too far, the brass
indentations would
shrink so much that the iron cannon balls would come right off the
monkey.

Thus, it was quite literally, cold enough to freeze the balls off a
brass monkey. And all this time,
you thought that was just a vulgar expression, didn't you?  You must
send this fabulous bit of
historical knowledge to at least a few uneducated friends. 

 

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