Loose cannon (1889)

[Stephen Goranson]

Quoting Dave Wilton <dave at WILTON.NET>:

> OED3 and HDAS have 1946.
>
> From the _Galveston Daily News_ (Texas), 19 December 1889
> (newspaperarchive.com):
>
> "It would in no event become, as Mr. Grady once said, "a loose cannon in a
> storm-tossed ship," for the very reason that it has not intelligence enough
> to voluntarily stand alone as a class and vote as a political unit.
>
> The metaphor may also be credited to Victor Hugo, who in his 1874 novel
> _Ninety Three_, included an incident about a cannon loose on the deck of
> ship during a storm.

Google books gives from Number seventeen: A Noevl [sic, though not so on the
title page} by Henry Kingsley,  London, vol. 2, (apparently-legitimate) date
1875, p.60:

At once, of course, the ship was in the trough of the sea, a more fearfully
dangerous engine of destruction than Mr. Victor Hugo's celebrated loose
cannon.
...

Stephen Goranson
http://www.duke.edu/~goranson

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