Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
Usage examples of "cannon-shot".
Eastward the russet level is broken by the columnar silhouette of the light house, and again, beyond it, by some puny scrub timber, above which rises the angular ruddy mass of the old brick fort, whose ditches swarm with crabs, and whose sluiceways are half choked by obsolete cannon-shot, now thickly covered with incrustation of oyster shells.
I put my head down and fairly flew - a fountain of dirt rose up just ahead of me as a cannon-shot from somewhere ploughed into the nullah hank, and the last thing I remember is the horse rearing up, and something smashing into my left arm with a blinding pain.
If the Frenchman had no objection to a prodigious waste of powder and shot he might as well open fire at this range, at extreme cannon-shot, in the hope of inflicting enough damage on Hotspur's rigging to slow her down.