Offenders received six to 12 strokes with a thick three-and-a-half-foot cane sometimes in private, sometimes in front of the other boys on the ship. In fact, caning was mostly a punishment for minors in the 19th and early 20th centuries, a time when boys as young as 12 could join the British Royal Navy. Yet like bread-and-water punishments, caning was once a less serious consequence for misbehavior on the high seas.
Worse than mast-heading was caning, a punishment in which you hit a sailor across his backside with a solid cane.
