"Over a barrel"

I've often wondered whether this expression has its origins in spanking. I did a quick check on the internet today and nobody seems completely sure. There are at least five possible origins.

1. Coastguards used to put nearly drowned people over a barrel to get water out of their lungs. The significance for the saying is that under those circumstances your life was completely in the coastguard's hands.

2. A practice of punishing someone by tying them to a barrel and rolling the barrel (!)

3. A practice of threshing rice by holding it over a barrel.

4. A 19th century practice of tying prisoners over a barrel before flogging them. This may have been a flogging on the back rather than the bottom, but this verse from 1869 makes a definite connection with spanking:

I'd like to be a school-marm,
And with the school-marms stand,
With a bad boy over a barrel
And with a spanker in my hand

(Also an unusual use of "spanker". Could it mean paddle?)

5. The naval practice of making midshipmen bend over the barrel of a cannon for punishment as here, though this is considered to be an unlikely origin.

Any thoughts?

My immediate thought was your discarded no. 5, but as all my naval information is from books by Captain Marryat and C.S. Forester devoured almost fifty years ago, it may not be worth much...

I always thought it had it's origins rooted in corporal punishment, but I am not certain, of course with my being a raging spankaholic EVERYTHING makes me think of spanking or to try to find some spanking twist that I can attribute to it so I am not your best source to answer this.

There is a story in the library called "Over a barrel" (by Guyde) and that is about "kissing the gunner's daughter" though the midshipman is not quite what "he" seems!

Re: number 2. on the list; being put into a barrel (of their own making) and rolled down a slope was part of an initiation ceremony when an apprentice barrel-maker graduated to become a cooper.

Perhaps being put over a barrel for an initiation 'punishment' was a variation on the theme?

To Jenny. A raging snankoholic. I love the kink, all my life Never considered myself as raging spankoholic . Forgive spelling Replace spankoholic after raging snankoholic. As the years go by I will agree with you. Maybe not raging but a real enthusiast.
Jenny. Just curious You dont have to say and you can tell me kiss off if you like. A simple question What is your preference? M/F F/M F/f or choose. I have never understood why a pretty girl would want to be spanked. I have always dreamed about it. And I hated it when my father spanked me. It hurt. and I cried, I still love watching beautiful women spanked.

I am mostly drawn to F/f stories but my tastes run the gamut.

I read in history of the practice of punishing criminals by tieing them over a barrel and spanking the culprit, he or she, then leaving them in place for a time. It is a term used for suggesting a situation where one party is placed in a poor position.

This image appears to confirm use of the barrel for spanking in US prisons

[imgs=https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/File:Punishment_of_the_Paddle,_1912.jpg][/imgs]

There is an artist who does spanking drawings who is called Overbarrel. Definitely a connection with corporal punishment, in terms of the origin of the expression.
Of course now it has come to mean being in a position, in a figurative sense, that is very difficult or hopeless.