<Tr> <Td> </Td> <Td> Some of this article's listed sources may not be reliable . Please help this article by looking for better, more reliable sources . Unreliable citations may be challenged or deleted . (May 2015) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) </Td> </Tr> <P> The phrase potentially has its origin in a Royal Navy requirement that pregnant women aboard naval vessels give birth in the space between the broadside guns, in order to keep the gangways and crew decks clear . Admiral William Henry Smyth wrote in his 1867 book, The Sailor's Word - Book: "Son of a gun, an epithet conveying contempt in a slight degree, and originally applied to boys born afloat, when women were permitted to accompany their husbands to sea; one admiral declared he literally was thus cradled, under the breast of a gun - carriage ." </P> <P> Alternatively, historian Brian Downing proposes that the phrase "son of a gun" originated from feudal knights' disdain for newly developed firearms and those who wielded them . An American urban myth also proposes that the saying originated in a story reported in the October 7, 1864 The American Medical Weekly about a woman impregnated by a bullet that went through a soldier's scrotum and into her abdomen . The story about the woman was a joke written by Dr. Legrand G. Capers; some people who read the weekly failed to realize that the story was a joke and reported it as true . This myth was the subject of an episode of the television show MythBusters, in which experiments showed the story implausible . </P>

Where did expression son of a gun come from