handle connected to nine thinner pieces of line, with each line knotted several times along its length. 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. 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. During the period of the Napoleonic Wars, the naval cat's handle was made of rope about long and about in diameter, and was traditionally covered with red baize cloth. The tails were made of cord about in diameter and typically . 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. The offence of sodomy generally drew the death penalty, though one eighteenth century court martial awarded a punishment of one thousand lashesa roughly equivalent sentence as there was no likelihood of survival. A new cat was made for each flogging by a bosun's mate and kept in a red baize bag until use. If several dozen lashes were awarded, each could be administered by a fresh bosun's mate—some ships 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, 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 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