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The phrase to throw out a tub to the whale, and its variants, mean: to create a diversion, in order to avoid a dangerous or unpleasant situation.
A variant of this phrase occurs, for example, in the following letter to the Editor, by Jocelyn Harris, of Dunedin, New Zealand, published in The Guardian (London and Manchester, England) of Friday 6th March 2015 [page 23, column 3]:
The referendum over the New Zealand flag is a tub to catch a whale. New Zealanders did not ask for a change of flag […]. It was the deeply cynical decision of prime minister, John Key, bent on distracting the populace from the real problems of climate change, polluted waterways, fossil fuels, impoverished children, inequality, high incarceration rates, a housing crisis, an obesity epidemic, and the running-down of the health system.
—Cf. also the expression dead-cat strategy, denoting the strategy consisting, for a politician, in deliberately making a shocking announcement in order to divert attention from a difficulty in which he or she is embroiled.
The phrase to throw out a tub to the whale, and its variants, allude to the following passage from A Tale of a Tub. Written for the Universal Improvement of Mankind (London: Printed for John Nutt, 1704), by the Irish satirist, poet and Anglican cleric Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) [Preface, page 14]:
Sea-men have a Custom when they meet a Whale, to fling him out an empty Tub, by way of Amusement, to divert him from laying violent Hands upon the Ship.
These are in chronological order, the earliest occurrences of the phrase to throw out a tub to the whale and variants that I have found:
1-: From the following letter, published in Fog’s Weekly Journal (London, England) of Saturday 29th August 1730 [page 1, column 1]—as reprinted in Select Letters taken from Fog’s Weekly Journal (London: Printed; and Sold by the Booksellers of London, 1732) [volume 2, page 73]:
We read in the Voyages of several great Travellers, that when Ships at Sea are threaten’d with Danger by the Appearance of any strange and monstrous Fish, it is the Custom for Seamen to throw out a Tub, which may divert the Monster, and keep it in Play, that in the mean time they may have an Opportunity of getting away.
From hence some Statesmen have taken a Hint which has proved of great Use to them in certain critical Circumstances, for at such Times as popular Discontents have run high against them, and threaten’d their total Destruction, it has been common to throw out something to divert and amuse the People, such as a Plot, a Conspiracy, or an Enquiry about Nothing, &c. which Method of Proceeding, by a very apt Metaphor, is call’d throwing out the Tub.
Nor can any thing be of greater Use towards hindering the Talents of a first Minister from being check’d by old Father Antique, the Law; for, when the People are oppress’d and abused, they are apt to be discontented, and when they are discontented, you hear them talk of Nothing but Impeachments and Axes, and Halters, and the like, which must be vast Impediments to the Resolution of a great Man;—for great Pity it wou’d be that a Person in a high Station, who loves fine Houses, and Gardens, and Pictures and Statues, and Horses, and Hounds, and Wenches, and Fools, and Flatterers, should be oblig’d to suppress the Exercise of those fine Talents, and be kept in Awe by the Murmurs of a discontented People.
I therefore conceive that as often as a great Man, by a free and uncontrouled Exercise of his natural Vertues, has rais’d up a Spirit of Resentment and Hatred in a Nation against him, it is highly necessary to throw out the Tub; that is to say, to amuse the Publick by some well-concerted Plot, which may divert their Thoughts, and turn them from the Consideration of national Grievances, and at the same time keep his Enemies in Awe; for all those that inveigh against Bribery, and Corruption, and sinking the publick Money, all those, I say, that talk of Impeachments, may be brought into the Plot, or at least they may be threaten’d with it, which may be a Means of stopping their Mouths, and making the Persons in the Administration easy.
2-: From an unsigned letter to the Editor, published in The South-Carolina Gazette (Charleston, South Carolina, USA) of Wednesday 20th June 1744 [page 4, column 3]:
Just after the General Assembly broke up, we had various Reports about the present Tax Act. From all which we could only gather that it was different from any former ones, That it made a great Noise, and that the Merchants in particular looked upon themselves to be so much injured by it that they seem’d resolved to make a Remonstrance to the King against it. I was therefore pleased when you promised in your last Gazette but one to insert in your next a Letter on that Subject, because I expected to see by that Means a true State of the Case. […]
I can’t express my Surprize when I came to see the said Letter in your last Gazette. Never was any one so baulked! I am not one Jot wiser now than I was before. […]
[…] Why is the Case so concealed that the Reader can’t see it? and Paragraphs of Acts of Parliament thrown out, like a Jub [sic] to a Whale? Is this the Way to give that Information to the Publick which is wanted? Does it do Credit to the Act in Question.
3-: From a scathing response to the above-quoted letter—response by ‘Civitates’, published in The South-Carolina Gazette (Charleston, South Carolina, USA) of Wednesday 27th June 1744 [page 3, column 3]:
—In the first sentence, ‘Civitates’ quotes the letter he replies to, and he then refers to the author of that letter as “the Gentleman”:
Why are Paragraphs of Acts of Parliaments [sic] thrown out like a Tub to a Whale. […] The Gentleman seems to have mentioned the Whale and Tub, meerly for the Sake of the Metaphor, and to pursue it in a few Words, I must take the Liberty to suppose Him that lumpish Animal of a Whale, sporting himself with that Tub of a Letter, concerning which he knows as much (or at least would seem to know) as a Whale does the Nature of a Tub, and who, with all his heavy Endeavours, his splashing and spattering, his Noise and Foam has left the Tub just as he found it, whole and sound.
4 & 5-: From Clarissa. Or, The History of a Young Lady: Comprehending the most Important Concerns of Private Life; and particularly shewing, the Distresses that may attend the Misconduct both of Parents and Children, in Relation to Marriage (London: Printed for S. Richardson, 1748), an epistolary novel by English author Samuel Richardson (1689-1761):
4-: [volume 3, letter 10, page 77]—the figurative phrase in alt means: (of a person) in an exalted or excited condition or mood:
She was not intimidated, however; and was going to rise upon me in her temper; and would have broke in upon my defence. But when a man talks to a lady upon such subjects, let her be ever so much in Alt, ’tis strange, if he cannot throw out a tub to the whale;—if he cannot divert her from resenting one bold thing, by uttering two or three full as bold; but for which more favourable interpretations will lie.
5-: [volume 6, letter 30, page 105]:
She flies out, and declares, that the ceremony which would repair all, shall never take place!—Can this be from any other motive, than female resentment?
This brought them all upon me, as I intended it should: It was as a tub to the whale; and after I had let them play with it awhile, I claimed their attention, and knowing that they always loved to hear me prate, went on.
The lady, it is plain, thought, that the reclaiming of a man from bad habits, was a much easier task, than, in the nature of things, it can be.
6-: From A Vindication of the Conduct of the Present War, in a Letter to ****** (London: Printed for J. and R. Tonson, 1760) [pages 15 & 16]:
Hanover is too small an object for our attention […]. Should the fortune of war, by and by, declare itself against us, then will be the season to withdraw our troops, and relinquish the country we can no longer protect: we shall then have the consolation to reflect, that we have acted as an upright and faithful ally ought to act, and that by employing almost the whole power of France upon that spot, we have diverted them from objects of higher import; in other words, that by throwing this Hanover, this tub to the whale, the ship we swim in, has been less endangered.
