“Not Just for Sailors Any More”: Maritime Tattooing in Context

12 June 2024
Research Seminar
Speakers: Matt Lodder, Gemma Angel
This talk is part of a series entitled Out to Sea which focuses on the influence of oceans and their coasts in relation to Britain and its global empire, on visual and architectural imagination and production.
As an opening line for an article in a popular newspaper about tattoos, the suggestion that “tattoos are not just for sailors anymore” is a familiar one. Indeed, it often feels as if the same sentiment graces every article about tattooing in the mainstream press. Tattooing, we have been told again and again recently, is coming of age - finally coming out of the murky shadows of the deviant underworld to leave its mark on the most well heeled. Tattoos are now to be seen on catwalks, on trading floors and around the chicest tables.
The hacks who churn out these stories might be surprised to learn, then, that the popular media has been reporting the arrival of tattooing in high society for nearly one hundred and fifty years. Indeed, in 1926, Vanity Fair reported that “tattooing has passed from the savage to the sailor, from the sailor to the landsman, and is now to be found beneath many a tailored shirt”.
In this talk, Matt discusses the longstanding intersections between tattooing and maritime [visual] cultures, but also considers why tattoos have been so indelibly associated with the sea, despite their continuous presence amongst urban populations in Europe and America for more than four centuries. Moreover, with attention to visual evidence, he illustrates the relationships between handicrafts made on board ships and the persistent folk imagery of the Western tattoo tradition.