Post History

[According to Snopes](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/cannon-father/), who knows what the true origin is.

>The faintly derogative epithet “son of a gun” has been documented as part of the lexicon of the English language since 1708, but no one can really lay claim to knowing how it began or what the phrase originally signified. Numerous interesting backstories have emerged in the centuries since, and it’s possible one might even be the right one, but we no longer have any way of knowing.

They do, however, reject several proposed histories. In addition to a twist on your proposed answer, where the women (most of them prostitutes) facetiously answered that they literally were impregnated by one of the ship's cannons, they cite several explanations which all revolve around guns somehow helping women aboard the ship to give birth. All of these share several an important element in common, namely women giving birth aboard a ship without their husbands present, which the Snopes article methodically proves is either impossible or nonsensical.