It refered to letting the cat-o-nine tails out of the Red bag on ship whenever there was trouble.
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The Cat O' Nine Tails is a type of multi-tailed whipping device that originated as an implement for severe physical punishment as in the British Royal Navy.
Description and History
The naval "cat", also known as the captain's daughter (in principle it was only used under his authority), was about 13 oz. in weight and composed of a baton (handle) and nine thongs.
The instrument traditionally has nine thongs as a result of the manner in which rope is braided. Thinner rope is made from three strands of yarn braided together, and thicker rope from three strands of thinner rope braided together. To make a cat o' nine tails, a rope would simply be unraveled into three small ropes, and each of those would then be unraveled in turn.
During the period of the Napoleonic wars, the naval cat's handle was made of rope about two feet long and about an inch in diameter, and was traditionally covered with red baize cloth. The "tails" or thongs were made of cord about a quarter inch in diameter and typically two feet long. When inflicting punishment for theft, which was considered a particularly offensive crime on board ship, the thongs were each knotted three times to cause additional pain. A new cat was made for each flogging by a bosun's mate and kept in a red baize bag until use. In Trafalgar time, it was made by the condemned sailor during 24 in leg irons. The nine strongest falls were kept, and extra lashes were administered if any of the selected falls were found to be sub-standard. If several dozen lashes were awarded, each could be administered by a fresh bosun's mate - a left-handed 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.
In some cases a cat with a wooden handle was used, and steel balls or barbs of wire were added to the tips of the thongs to maximize the potential flogging injury.
All formal punishments -ordered by captain or court martial- were given ceremoniously on deck, the crew being summoned to ‘witness punishment’ (though usually adults and boys separate) and drama enhanced by drum roll and a whole routine. Informal 'daily' canings etc. were often left unrecorded.
Contrary to popular belief, the standard cat was not the most feared implement; being made of rope, it was rather less painful than a leather whip or a wooden birch-rod, while the modes of application (number and inensity of lashes, anatomical target, baring etc.) of any implement can be more important than its intrinsic potential.
For summary punishment of Royal Navy boys, a lighter model was made, the reduced cat, also known as boy's cat, boy's pussy or just pussy, that had only five tails of smooth whip cord. If condemned by court martial, however, even boys would suffer the claw 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" (i.e. bending over a gun), 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-, a rope's end et cetera). Bare-bottom discipline was a tradition of the English upper and middle classes, who frequented public schools, so midshipmen (trainee officers, usually from ‘good families’, getting a cheaper equivalent education) were not spared, at best sometimes allowed to receive their lashes inside a cabin. Still it is reported that the ‘infantile’ humiliation of bare stern punishment was believed essential for optimal deterrance, cocky miscreants might brave the pain of the adult cat in the macho spirit of ‘taking it like a man’, even as a ‘badge of honor’. 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 favorite in public schools.
