Cat o' nine tails

Variations exist, either named cat (of x tails) or not, such as the whip used on adult Egyptian prisoners which had a cord on a cudgel branching into seven tails, each with six knots, used only on adult men, with boys being subject to caning, until Egypt banned the use of the device in 2001.[4]

Sometimes the term "cat" is used incorrectly to describe various other punitive flogging devices with multiple tails in any number, even one made from 80 twigs (so rather a limp birch) to flog a drunk or other offender instead of 80 lashes normally applicable under shariah law. The closed cat, one without tails, was called a starter.

The naval cat weighed about 370 grams (13 oz) and was composed of a handle connected to nine thinner pieces of line, with each line knotted several times along its length.[5] Formal floggings — those ordered by captain or court martial — were administered ceremonially on deck, the crew being summoned to "witness punishment" and the prisoner being brought forward by marines with fixed bayonets.[5]

In the British navy, the boatswain's mate stood two steps from the offender, combing out the tails of the cat due to the thinner parts of the cat sticking to each other. He would then swing it over his head, make a step forward and, bending his body to give more force to the blow, deliver the stroke at the full sweep of his arm.[3] During the period of the Napoleonic Wars, the naval cat's handle was made of rope about 60 cm (2 ft) long and about 3 cm (1 in) in diameter, and was traditionally covered with red baize cloth. The tails were made of cord about 6 mm (1⁄4 in) in diameter and typically 60 cm (2 ft).

Sailor being flogged with a cat-o'-nine-tails while four sailors are waiting for their turn to flog him.

Drunkenness could be punished by a dozen lashes, which could be administered on the authority of the ship's captain. Greater punishments were generally administered following a formal court martial, with Royal Navy records reflecting some standard penalties of two hundred lashes for desertion, three hundred for mutiny, and up to five hundred for theft. One blow was sufficient to take off the skin, and to draw blood wherever the knots fell. Three dozen was a common punishment. Three hundred lashes were frequently given.[6] The offence of sodomy generally drew the death penalty, though one eighteenth century court martial awarded a punishment of one thousand lashes – an equivalent sentence as it would likely be fatal.[7]

A new cat was made for each flogging by a boatswain's mate and kept in a red baize bag until use. If several dozen lashes were awarded, each could be administered by a fresh boatswain's mate — some ship's captains would include a left-handed bosun's mate in their crews, so that one could be included to assure extra painful crisscrossing of the wounds. One dozen was usually awarded as a highly sensitizing prelude to running the gauntlet.

For summary punishment of Royal Navy boys, a lighter model was made, known as boy's cat or boy's pussy, that had only five tails of smooth whip cord.[8] If formally convicted by a court martial, however, even boys would suffer the punishment of the adult cat. While adult sailors received their lashes on the back, they were administered to boys on the bare posterior, usually while "kissing the gunner's daughter" (publicly bending over a gun barrel), just as boys' lighter "daily" chastisement was usually over their (often naked) rear-end (mainly with a cane—this could be applied to the hand, but captains generally refused such impractical disablement—or a rope's end). Bare-bottom discipline was a tradition of the English upper and middle classes, who frequented public schools,[9] so midshipmen (trainee officers, usually from 'good families', getting a cheaper equivalent education by enlisting) were not spared. Still, it is reported that the 'infantile' embarrassment of prolonged, public bare-bottom punishment was believed essential for optimal deterrence; cocky miscreants might brave the pain of the adult cat in the macho spirit of "taking it like a man" or even as a "badge of honour".

On board training ships, where most of the crew were boys, the cat was never introduced, but their bare bottoms risked, as in other naval establishments on land, "the sting of the birch", another favourite in public schools.

"The severest form of flogging was a flogging round the fleet. The number of lashes was divided by the number of ships in port and the offender was rowed between ships for each ship's company to witness the punishment."[10] Penalties of hundreds of lashes were imposed for the gravest offences, including sedition and mutiny. The prisoner was rowed around the fleet in an open boat and received a number of his lashes at each ship in turn, for as long as the surgeon allowed. Sentences often took months or years to complete, depending on how much a man was expected to bear at a time. Normally 250–500 lashes would kill a man, as infections would spread.[11] After the flogging was completed, the sailor's lacerated back was frequently rinsed with brine or seawater, which was thought to serve as a crude antiseptic (although it is now known that seawater contains significant microbial components). Although the purpose was to control infection, it caused the sailor to endure additional pain, and gave rise to the expression "rubbing salt into his wounds", which came to mean vindictively or gratuitously increasing a punishment or injury already imposed.[12]

The British Army had a similar multiple whip, though much lighter in construction, made of a drumstick with attached strings. The flogger was usually a drummer rather than a strong bosun's mate. Flogging with the cat o' nine tails fell into disuse around 1870.

Whereas the British naval cat rarely cut (contrary to graphic films) but rather abraded the skin, the falls (tresses) of the British Army cat were lighter (around 3.2 mm (1⁄8 in)) and the string was in fact codline – a very dense material akin to tarred string. Although the total whip would weigh only a fraction of a naval rope cat, the thin, dense codline tresses were far more likely to cut the skin. However, one lash in the navy was considered equivalent in severity to several in the army; and although the lashes were numbered by dozens instead of hundreds, twelve stripes afloat were fully equal to a hundred on shore. This was partly owing to the make and material of the cat, and also to the mode of flogging.[3]

A soldier who was flogged in 1832, with a cat precisely similar to that used in the King’s fleet, said: “I felt an astounding sensation between the shoulders, under my neck, which went to my toe-nails in one direction, and my finger-nails in another, and stung me to the heart, as if a knife had gone through my body.... He came on a second time a few inches lower, and then I thought the former stroke was sweet and agreeable compared with that one.... I felt my flesh quiver in every nerve, from the scalp of my head to my toe-nails. The time between each stroke seemed so long as to be agonising, and yet the next came too soon.... The pain in my lungs was more severe, I thought, than on my back. I felt as if I would burst in the internal parts of my body.... I put my tongue between my teeth, held it there, and bit it almost in two pieces. What with the blood from my tongue, and my lips, which I had also bitten, and the blood from my lungs, or some other internal part, ruptured by the writhing agony, I was almost choked, and became black in the face.... Only fifty had been inflicted, and the time since they began was like a long period of life; I felt as if I had lived all the time of my real life in pain and torture, and that the time when existence had pleasure in it was a dream, long, long gone by.” [13]

It was also used elsewhere in the empire, notably at the penal colonies in Australia, and also in Canada (a dominion in 1867) where it was used until 1881. An 1812 drawing[14] shows a drummer apparently lashing the buttocks of a naked soldier who is tied with spread legs on an A-frame made from sergeants' half pikes. In many places, soldiers were generally flogged stripped to the waist.

The cat o' nine tails was also used on adult convicts in prisons; a 1951 memorandum[15] (possibly confirming earlier practice) ordered all UK male prisons to use only cats o' nine tails (and birches) from a national stock at Wandsworth prison, where they were to be 'thoroughly' tested before being supplied in triplicate to a prison whenever a flogging was pending for use as prison discipline. In the 20th century, this use was confined to very serious cases involving violence against a prison officer, and each flogging had to be confirmed by central government.

Especially harsh floggings were given with it in secondary penal colonies of early colonial Australia, particularly at such places as Norfolk Island (apparently this had 9 leather thongs, each with a lead weight, meant as the ultimate deterrent for hardened life-convicts), Port Arthur and Moreton Bay (now Brisbane).