An old scraggy woman; from a kind of float made of spars and yards lashed together, for saving ship-wrecked persons.
Definition taken from The 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, originally by Francis Grose.
Cat whipping * Catch ClubNathan Bailey's 1736 Dictionary of canting and thieving slang
John S. Farmer's collection of canting songs and slang rhymes