When the British first began to explore Africa, young monkeys were often captured and taken back on board the ship to entertain sailors. Some were later kept in zoos, many modern captive monkeys in the UK are descended from such Victorian era monkeys. In Napoleonic wars the same practice is thought to have occurred and is rumoured to have led to a monkey being washed up ashore and hanged in Hartlepool, this caused the people of Hartlepool to be nicknamed the Monkey Hangers.
A fictional variant of this practice was seen in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, where the lead villain had a skeletal monkey who figures into several points of the story.
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