Long Cecil is a cannon built in the workshops of the

De Beers The De Beers Group is a South African–British corporation that specializes in the diamond industry, including mining, exploitation, retail, inscription, grading, trading and industrial diamond manufacturing. The company is active in open-pi ...

mining company in

Kimberley Kimberly or Kimberley may refer to: Places and historical events Australia Queensland * Kimberley, Queensland, a coastal locality in the Shire of Douglas South Australia * County of Kimberley, a cadastral unit in South Australia Ta ...

for use by the

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies. * British national identity, the characteristics of British people and culture ...

in the

Siege of Kimberley The siege of Kimberley took place during the Second Boer War at Kimberley, Northern Cape, Kimberley, Cape Colony (present-day South Africa), when Boer forces from the Orange Free State and the South African Republic, Transvaal besieged the diam ...

during the

Second Boer War The Second Boer War (, , 11 October 189931 May 1902), also known as the Boer War, Transvaal War, Anglo–Boer War, or South African War, was a conflict fought between the British Empire and the two Boer republics (the South African Republic and ...

Construction

The defenders at Kimberley had only the relatively small RML 2.5 inch Mountain Gun at their disposal and therefore lacked a weapon that could effectively match those fielded by the surrounding Boers. Long Cecil-Williams-727

George Labram George Labram (1859-1900) was an American engineer employed as Chief Mechanical Engineer at the De Beers diamond mines in Kimberley during the Siege of Kimberley. Early life Labram was born in Detroit, Michigan in 1859, but attended school at th ...

and Edward Goffe, Chief Draughtsman at the mine, reviewed the limited number of textbooks and publications on gunmaking that were available in Kimberley. From this and calculations on what it would require to build a gun capable of firing a shell over , they decided that it was feasible to build the gun with the materials at hand. Construction of the gun began on 26 December 1899 with rough-turning of the barrel, but some of the tools required for

rifling Rifling is the term for helical grooves machined into the internal surface of a firearms's barrel for imparting a spin to a projectile to improve its aerodynamic stability and accuracy. It is also the term (as a verb) for creating such groov ...

the barrel were not available and first had to be manufactured on site. The barrel was constructed from a , billet of mild steel. The steel billet was originally ordered as a shaft for one of the De Beers workshop machines.

Impact on the siege

As with all the components, custom ammunition for the gun had to be manufactured in the De Beers workshops. The first proving shot was fired a little over three weeks later on 19 January 1900 at a Boer encampment near

Kamfers Dam Kamfers Dam is a privately owned permanent water body of 400 ha, situated to the immediate north of Kimberley, Northern Cape, Kimberley, South Africa. The wetland was originally an ephemeral Salt pan (geology), pan, often dry and dependent on rai ...

, north of the city. Contemporary accounts state that the Boers were initially surprised by range of the new gun, which was able to land projectiles very accurately on their previously safe position. The gun fired a total of 255 shells onto Boer positions from the time of its manufacture until the end of the siege about a month later. The gun did not change the balance of power for long, because the Boers brought a larger 100-pound "Long Tom" gun to bear within two weeks of Long Cecil's deployment. The shelling of the besieged residents thereby escalated and soon became more lethal than before. The shelling ended only with arrival of Major-General French's 8,000-strong cavalry on 15 February 1900.

Legacy

In 1902, during

Cecil Rhodes Cecil John Rhodes ( ; 5 July 185326 March 1902) was an English-South African mining magnate and politician in southern Africa who served as Prime Minister of the Cape Colony from 1890 to 1896. He and his British South Africa Company founded th ...

' funeral procession in

Cape Town Cape Town is the legislature, legislative capital city, capital of South Africa. It is the country's oldest city and the seat of the Parliament of South Africa. Cape Town is the country's List of municipalities in South Africa, second-largest ...

, Rhodes' coffin was carried on top of the Long Cecil carriage. Today the gun is located on the

stylobate In classical Greek architecture, a stylobate () is the top step of the crepidoma, the stepped platform upon which colonnades of temple columns are placed (it is the floor of the temple). The platform was built on a leveling course that fl ...

(facing the Free State) of the Honoured Dead Memorial in

. At some time before 1915

Pratt & Whitney Pratt & Whitney is an American aerospace manufacturer with global service operations. It is a subsidiary of RTX Corporation (formerly Raytheon Technologies). Pratt & Whitney's aircraft engines are widely used in both civil aviation (especially ...

built a model of this gun as a gift to the

American Society of Mechanical Engineers The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) is an American professional association that, in its own words, "promotes the art, science, and practice of multidisciplinary engineering and allied sciences around the globe" via "continuing edu ...

Notes

External links

{{Coord, 28, 45, 4, S, 24, 46, 10, E, type:landmark, display=title Artillery of the United Kingdom Howitzers Kimberley, Northern Cape De Beers 1900 in South Africa

Construction

Impact on the siege

Legacy

Notes

Further reading

External links