http://www.tattooarchive.com/history/sailor_tattoos.htm

Reg.

How many young seamen got a tattoo when they first went to sea?
I went to Sailor Bill's in Liverpool and got an anchor on an eagle with the inscription Mother emblazond on a scroll, I was sixteen years old at the time when tattoo's were nowhere near as artistic as they are today... One thing is sure they age with you, actually slightly ahead of you, the couple I have are now just blue shadows on my 74 year old arms.

Well I for one did not get any tattoos mainly because I would look at how much it would cost and figured that the publican was in more need of that money than the tattooist. Les

A good piece of logical thinking Les, wish I'd have thought like that.

I was 17 when I got my tattoos; over the years the lines have got thicker and thicker and it is very hard to read much of them. It's funny how they become part of you; they don't even register with me unless someone remarks on them.

I got one on my left arm of a swallow with a girls name on it when I was eighteen, she binned me so I`m glad its faded. I got another of an eagle on my chest in Hong Kong, it was supposed to have a snake hanging from its talons, it would have reached my belly button but I opted out on that. Ernie.

I'm not kidding, Tony, I have the same American eagle/fouled anchor and ribbon with Mother on it.
Sailor Bill's, Hemans Street, off Upper Warwick. And its faded also, as you would expect after sixty-plus years.

I have also met Albert Cornelissen when he was located in the Kattendrecht. He is mentioned in the links to
Reg's post.

I have told this story before, somewhere ortother. After getting a six month suspension off
the Established pool I found myself in Aldershot, dressed in a khaki two-piece suit. Now, Aldershot had a tattoo
artist, a female named Jessie as I remember, and a mate in the platoon had confided that he wanted to get
the main portion of his wedding tackle tattooed, but was too shy to ask this of the lady, and would I go along
and ask her if she would do it. We got there on payday evening, behind some young troopers and sappers
all getting the obligatory Death before Dishonour or such scratched on their arms. After some time it was Joe's
turn, but he had got cold feet and said I should go first. It was not my intention to add to what was already
marking my skin, but when he offered to pay for anything I wanted then I took him up on it and got
a laurel around a sailing ship that occupied a place on my upper r/arm. Finally, Joe pulled me aside and told
me that he would only get a small swallow tattoed on a forearm, and I need not ask her the more
delicate question. He sat there winceing and sweating in the close atmosphere of her parlour, as she
applied the needle to him. "Is it hurting?" she aked him. "A bit, sez he." I told her that he would really have
reason to sweat if he'd gone through with his original intention. She laughed, guessing what I meant, and
told us about her father who had been a tattoo artist in the East End docks. He had been awakened from his
sleep by two drunken seafarers, a captain and his chief engineer. One had bet the other that he would
get his scrotum tattooed, and they had both put up enough money to make it worth her Dad's time to
come on down and open up his parlour. He accomplished the difficult tattooing job by stretching the
customer's loosely hanging skin across a wooden seat and thumb-tacking it to said seat, thus achieving
a smooth surface upon which to perform his art. Tough old ba**ards.

SAILOR TATTOOS STARTED AROUND 1600th Century,.

Tattoo has a big debt towards sailors. It was thanks to them, in fact, that what we call “modern tattooing” was born around the end of the 16th century. Since then it has continued to develop and spread throughout Europe and the United States.

Tattooing, whether religious, military, aesthetic, therapeutic, erotic or punitive, has been practised by countless peoples throughout the world – in much of Asia, China, Japan, the South Pacific islands, in Africa, South and North America, in Greenland, in Europe and the Mediterranean region.
The Egyptians did it, the Romans too, the Greeks, Germans, Bretons, Gauls and Thracians, and many more besides, all did it. Whereas in the rest of the world the habit of tattooing survived, indeed in certain places developed into highly sophisticated art, in Europe it fell into oblivion and almost completely disappeared following a Papal prohibition in 787 AD, during the Council of Churches in Calcuth, Northumberland (England). It took nearly a thousand years before tattooing began to be widely practised in Europe again and it was thanks to exploration by the great European navigators that it was rediscovered in various native societies that they met with on their voyages. This gave rise to a new form of tattooing. Modern western tattoo no longer had its original tribal connotations (religious, military, therapeutic) but was mainly aesthetic. It developed its own iconography of symbols and motifs, most of which were tied to seafaring life. The first people to be captured by native tattoos were the sailors on voyages of exploration to unknown parts of the globe. The first tattoo shops in the western world were opened in big European and US ports by sailors who’d been tattooed in the Pacific, for example, and learned the technique. They practised on their crew mates on their long voyages and when the habit was pretty much established in the sailor’s world, they started opening little shops in the major ports with European traffic. One of the first to talk about tattooing was an English sea captain in 1593, one John Smith, whose diaries tell of encounters in North America with native peoples who tattooed animals and snakes on their hands, arms, legs, chest and face.
The real birth of modern tattooing though came a century later, in 1691, when the English navigator William Dampier brought back from the South Pacific Islands (for the very first time) a splendid prince (Prince Giolo) whose body was completely covered with tattoos. Prince Giolo was taken to the Court of the regents William and Mary and scored a huge success with the aristocracy and high society of the time in general.

In 1774 Captain James Cook brought another native, whose name was Omai, back from the Amsterdam Islands in the South Pacific. Cook and his partner Joseph Banks took Omai on tour throughout England, for over a year, before putting him on ship back home. But poor Omai died of measles during the voyage. Captain Cook was also the first to use the term tattow (from the Tahitian “tatau”, to mark), which appeared in “Captain Cook’s first voyage” published in 1769. Giolo and Omai were the first of a long series of tattooed “natives”. They were followed by Europeans and Americans who did the round of fairs and circuses in their countries. But whereas these travelling fairs and circuses introduced the custom inland, where tattooed people in turn tattooed the public, it was seafaring folk who opened the first real professional shops, in the world’s major ports, and started creating a style of tattooing and an iconography of symbols and motifs that was to form the basis of modern western tattoo. By the mid 19th century there were professional tattoo shops in ports in Great Britain, France, Holland, Germany and Italy. In London there were two very famous tattooists – O’Riley and MacDonald – whose clients included royalty and aristocracy. By 1870 tattooing had become a sort of mania with the nobility in Britain and Europe. The English King George and the Prince of Wales had tattoos, as did Duke Alphonse of Edinburgh, Prince Henry of Prussia and Archduke Steffen of Austria. Many of them went as far as Japan to get tattoos by the great masters. Tattoos were very popular with people in general as well, especially soldiers. But the people who were absolutely the most tattooed in the western world were sailors. A survey carried out at the end of the 19th century by the US Navy revealed that 90% of their servicemen were tattooed. By the turn of that century, in fact, the whole of the western world was in the throes of a tattoo mania. While the techniques and care taken over producing designs developed in the wake of the circus “show business”, the practice that seafaring folk had of getting tattoos as souvenirs of their travels (or even tattooing themselves) had consolidated into a great sailor tattoo tradition. There was a boom in tattooing that involved the whole of society, though affecting women less than men. And nowhere was the boom more apparent than amongst sailors and people living in sea ports. Sailors participated more in this phenomenon than other people because they came into contact with indigenous peoples and learnt how to tattoo from them. They also had long periods of inactivity during their voyages, during which tattooing was a pastime, indeed it was a group phenomenon, a ritual of courage and virility. It gave sailors a way of boasting of their long voyages, of crossing the line and visiting exotic countries. An indelible souvenir to show off back home. The need to express nostalgia for their loved ones and their home country, combined with their strong superstitious leanings, explains why tattooing took such a firm hold of the seafaring community. Throughout the 19th century sailors would come home with motifs or souvenirs tattooed indelibly on their chests or arms. This ancient custom soon became widespread on ships.
* Unknown author?.*
Reg.

Hi All .
Well i never got tattooed, i thought about it a few times, but then when in Capetown one of the guys had a tat done. A few days later he was put ashore with blood poisoning they recond he was going to loose his arm. So that definatly put me off. The tattooist was supposed to be world famous for his tats, well theres one nobody will see.
geoff

panama was a good placr to get a tattoo,3 of my 5 were done there as i done about five trips with psnc co it was one of my favorite ports.

Hi ALL.
Its strange to see that a lot of the youth in NZ, are getting tribal tats.They seem to be following the Maori and Pacific designs, some of them are real nice to look at. We also have facial tats ( moko) A lot of the gangs wear them and they look a mess, the nick name for them are scribble faces. Also the women have them on their bottom lip.
There is a big thing on at the moment for the return of severed heads traded in the 1800s for blankets, guns etc.What used to happen was , you raided your neighbours place, lopped off his head and sold it to the seamen/traders. They brought it back and on sold it .Now they want them back.
geoff.

A poem by David Partridge, which can be seen on British Merchant Navy site, which epitomises everything about tatoos.

I've seen snakes and ships and girlfriends names
And daggers dripping with red
I've seen dancing girls and death's head skulls
And tombstones of those who are dead
I've seen Mickey Mouse & Yogi Bear & mermaids sitting on rocks
And ladies in their underwear tatooed on Scousers and Jocks
Some are so bad they must have been pi**d
And some have the spelling all wrong
Some were started in old London Town & finished of in Hong Kong
They're on arms & legs and shoulders & chests
And some were the sun don't shine
Sailors like anchors and favourite ports
And the flag of the Blue Funnel Line
In Rio once I saw a tatoo, surely the worst of all time
A row of dots across his neck with, cut across dotted line
Tigers and Dragons and Spiders Webs
I've even seen Desperate Dan
And one poor soul on his back, an intricate map of Japan
Some must ask as the years go by if that picture was worth all the pain
There would be very few would have that tatoo
If they had their time over again
I've sat beside some mates of mine as the needle ravaged their skin
But I'm happy to say there was never a time
I was tempted to join in.

Is this the besr tat ever?

took a long time for me to find it but a great poem

I remember in 56 having two tattoos done by an A.B. on the fore deck of the 'Braemar Castle' off Zanzibar. As an colleague said earlier they tend to age with you. Mine was a rose over clasped hands which read 'Dad' and the other is (supposed to be) a rose clasped in a hand with the word 'Mum' underneath. I teach swimming at the local club and two children in one class asked me, 'Mike, why have you an ice cream cornet tattoed on each arm'. Ah well nothing lasts but those 'ice creams cornets' still bring back memories from over 50 years ago.

I have a tattoo of a rose on back left shoulder. I had it redone when I went to England to visit with Howard as it faded over the years. I think it looks cool.