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A cat o'nine tails is a whip with nine knotted lashes. Its origin is believed to date back to ancient Egypt, where the domestic cat was sacred and, even then, was said to have nine lives. The Egyptians believed that when beaten with cat hide, the victim gained virtue from the whip.
The nine cords or tails represent the nine lives of a cat and the whip also left marks like the scratches of a cat. On board ship the whip was kept in a bag, and the 'cat was let out of the bag' for a flogging. Plenty of room was needed to swing the whip without the tails getting caught, hence the saying 'no room to swing a cat'. This cat o'nine tails is made of leather, ivory and rope, and dates from the 18th or 19th century. Whips like this would have been used during the transatlantic slave trade by sailors to punish African captives on board ship. White sailors and soldiers in the British navy and army were also subject to flogging with the dreaded 'cat' until well into the 19th century.
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Understanding Slavery Initiative
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The offender could be blindfolded with hands tied behind the back and made to walk overboard. Not as common as its feared reputation.
The most feared pirate punishment of all: a rope was passed under the ship from side to side as would be used for scraping barnacles off the ship's keel. The offender to be keelhauled was attached to the rope and thrown overboard and the rope pulled so as to force the offender underwater, underneath the ship's hull and up the other side. The razor sharp barnacles would cut into the unfortunate sailor like a saw's edge, causing great pain. The victim might surface, gasp for air and taunting by his pirate comrades and then be keelhauled back underwater for another run. By all imagining, this would likely be one of the slowest and most painful ways to be killed aboard ship.
http://www.thepirateking.com/historical/pirates_punishments.htm
Piratical Punishments & Torture
Piracy was both a rebellion and an economic activity. Pirates were not above selling shipmates as slaves, particularly those who had become outsiders whilst in a pirate company because they had transgressed the pirate codes or agreements. Selling a shipmate into slavery had a clear economic benefit to the ship's company.
Weapons of the civil war
By Ian V. Hogg
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