Whistling Dick (cannon)

Named for the sound made when it fired, the cannon is believed to have been a rifled 18-pounder gun, which may have had banding on its breech as reinforcement.

Historian Ed Bearss notes that the history of Whistling Dick is filled with "legends, inaccuracies, and contradictions".

[5] Confederate officers Edward Higgins and Samuel H. Lockett produced writings that identified Whistling Dick as an 18-pounder rifled cannon.

[4] Bearss notes the writings of Higgins and Lockett, as well as those of Confederate artilleryman A. L. Slack, and concludes that the true Whistling Dick was an 18-pounder rifled gun.

[4] Slack had written in a newspaper article in 1900 that the gun had originally been a smoothbore before rifling was later applied to it and that its breech had been strengthened with banding.

[8] Ripley considers Slack's description to be probably accurate, although he also notes that the amount of time between the siege and the article means that the account may be in error on some points.

[3] Tommy Presson, writing for The Vicksburg Post, states that this rear location was near the 21st-century site of an administrative building owned by the Vicksburg-Warren School District.

While this photograph has often been claimed to depict Whistling Dick, historian Warren Ripley has demonstrated that this identification is in error. [ 6 ]