![]() ![]() ![]() "French sailor and deserter" (at right) from The Criminal by Henry Havelock Ellis, 1890 originally printed in L'homme criminel: atlas by Cesare Lombroso, 1888. The Naval History and Heritage Command says that "by the late 18th century, around a third of British and a fifth of American sailors had at least one tattoo." 19th century : 19–22 : 157įollowing the American Revolution, American sailors' tattoos were listed in their protection papers, an identity certificate issued to prevent impressment into the British Royal Navy. Scholars debate whether Cook's voyages themselves markedly increased the popularity of tattooing among sailors, or whether the rise of print culture and surveillance-based recordkeeping that happened around the same time made tattoos more visible in the historical record. : 16–23 Maritime historian Ira Dye writes that "the tattooing of American (and by strong inference, European) seafarers was a common and well-established practice at the time of Cook's voyages." : 523 There is a persistent myth that tattoos on European sailors originated with Captain James Cook's crew, who were tattooed in Tahiti in 1769, but Cook brought only the word tattoo to Europeans, not the practice itself. For example, in the 1720s-1730s in Virginia and Maryland, there are multiple mentions in newspapers of sailors who had blue markings on their arms, including initials and crucifixes, made with gunpowder. 18th century Īmerican and English sailors around 1700-1750 used gunpowder or ink to create tattoos by pricking the skin and rubbing the powder into the wound. The development of an "identifiable tattooing tradition" among sailors may be an extension of their "choice of social self-demarcation through distinctive dress and accessories." : 76 Tattoos are also practical: they help to identify the body of a drowned sailor. Charles Pierre Claret de Fleurieu, Voyage autour du monde (1798) Starting around the 1870s, a few former sailors began opening professional tattoo parlors in port cities in the United States and England, especially after the development of the electric tattoo machine in the 1890s. These tattoo artists informally developed a graphical vocabulary including nautical images such as mermaids and ships. Common symbols include swallows, nautical stars, and anchors.įor centuries, tattooing among sailors mostly happened during downtime at sea, applied by hand with needles and tattoo ink made with simple pigments such as soot and gunpowder. Sailor tattoos have served as protective talismans in sailors' superstitions, records of important experiences, markers of identity, and means of self-expression. People participating in these traditions have included military service members in national navies, seafarers in whaling and fishing fleets, and civilian mariners on merchant ships and research vessels. These practices date back to at least the 16th century among European sailors, and since colonial times among American sailors. Sailor tattoos are traditions of tattooing among sailors, including images with symbolic meanings.
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