Kiss The Gunner's Daughter Meaning

(archaic, idiomatic, navy) To be flogged or beaten while restrained over a cannon.

Example: 1824, Sir Walter Scott, Redgauntlet, ch. 14:
  But I was punished, my lad—made to kiss the wench that never speaks but when she scolds, and that's the gunner's daughter, comrade.
2002, Wallace Bruce, John Paul Jones: Father of the United States Navy, ISBN 9780595242320, p. 81:
  "No," replied Bosun Thorpe, "for any breaches of discipline by boy seamen are dealt within by making him, in naval jargon, ‘kiss the gunner's daughter’. . . . he bends over one of the guns; then he is lashed across the backside."