page_title: Long Cecil
section_title: Impact on the siege
hierarchical_section_title: Long Cecil / Impact on the siege
caption_attribution_description: George Labram leaning on Long Cecil, as published in "Cassell's History of the Boer War, 1899-1902 by Richard Danes"
context_page_description: Long Cecil is a single cannon, designed by George Labram, an American citizen, and built in the workshops of the De Beers mining company in Kimberley for use by the British during the Siege of Kimberley in the Second Boer War.
  In 1902, during Cecil Rhodes' funeral procession in Cape Town, his coffin was carried on top of the Long Cecil carriage. Today the gun is located on the stylobate of the Honoured Dead Memorial in Kimberley.
  At some time before 1915 Pratt & Whitney built a model of this gun as a gift to the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.
context_section_description: 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, 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.
caption: Long Cecil Ammunition
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