Tell it to the Marines

An early published use of the phrase is in 1804 in John Davis's novel The Post Captain; or, the Wooden Walls Well Manned; Comprehending a View of Naval Society and Manners:[1] "You may tell that to the marines ... may I be damned if the sailors will believe it",[2] and several similar shorter phrases in speeches by characters.

[2] In 1824, Sir Walter Scott used the phrase "Tell it to the Marines – the sailors won't believe it" in his novel Redgauntlet.

[4] In 1864, Anthony Trollope used the phrase in his novel The Small House at Allington in the chapter titled Domestic Troubles:[5][6] an angry speech by the character Mr.Lupex about his wife's doings, ending with "... Is that a story to tell to such a man as me!

[8] Once in a conversation between Lady Glencora and the Duke of Omnium ("When he said this, she gave him a look which almost upset even his gravity, a look which was almost the same as asking him whether he would not—"tell that to the marines.

In the 1942 comedy Once Upon a Honeymoon, Cary Grant's character is forced to read a pro-Nazi propaganda radio broadcast.

The phrase was used in the 1942 serial G-Men vs the Black Dragon (it is a captured American agent's response to a sneering Japanese villain's account of Axis victories) The phrase is the title of a British sitcom, Tell It to the Marines, which aired on ITV from 1959 to 1960.

[10] In 1904 William Price Drury, a novelist and retired Lieutenant Colonel of the Royal Marine Light Infantry, wrote in a preface of a 1904 collection of his stories The Tadpole of the Archangel that King Charles II of Great Britain (reigned 1660–1685) said the phrase to Samuel Pepys; in Drury's origin story, the Marines knew from their travels that flying fish exist, but Charles II did not believe them.

In 1917 in the United States, a recruitment poster shows a variation of the phrase and an enraged civilian who wants to enlist.

"[12] The phrase was the title of a 1952 series of war comics from Toby Press[13] and a 1960 album of Marine songs by Oscar Brand.