By the 19 th century, it is estimated that 90% of sailors in the US navy had at least one tattoo on their body.Īlthough the Polynesian designs were – and still are – part of the sailors’ tattoo ‘armory’ of designs, the tattoo culture amongst nautical brethren started to take on a design life force of its own. The practice of sailors tattooing their bodies took hold in the late 18 th Century, and over a short period of time, tattoos had spread throughout the British and American navies. The tattoo methods employed weren’t much different to those used by the Polynesians, although early records indicate the ink was made from gunpowder and urine. In those early days, sailors had their tattoos imprinted by the Polynesian tattooists in the islands, using their traditional tattooing tools and ink, but it wasn’t long before the matelots started to tattoo each other on board their ships. To this day, the only Polynesian art that is known to the world at large is from their tattoo designs, which still remain very popular. The members of Cook’s crew on the Endeavour were the first Europeans to ink Polynesian tattoos on their bodies. There were many subsequent references to tattoos in both Captain Cook’s and Sir Joseph Banks’ diaries, and in 1774, Banks returned to England with a living example of the art – a tattooed Polynesian warrior called Omai. It was here that Banks found the first examples of the famous intricate Maori face tattoos, and in January 1770, he acquired a perfectly preserved and tattooed Maori head. Later that year in October, Captain Cook discovered a group of hitherto unknown islands near New Zealand which were inhabited by Maoris. He also notes that the wounds remain painful for many days before they heal.īanks goes on to describe the tattooing of a 14-year-old girl on her buttocks, which was clearly so painful for the girl to endure that he had to leave before the tattoo was completed. kept in coconut shells and mixed with water…”īanks noted that the tattoo instruments were made of bone and shell which were fashioned into sharp ‘teeth’ numbering from 3 to 20 which are dipped into the black liquor and then driven into the skin by quick sharp blows that penetrate the skin “so deep that every stroke is followed by a small quantity of blood”. He writes that the color was “lamp black”, and was made from “…smoke of a kind of oily nuts used by them instead of candles…. “In short, they have an infinite diversity of figures in which they place this mark and some of them, we were told, had significations but this we never learned to our satisfaction.” which both sexes have on their arms and legs. “Some have ill-designed figures of men, birds or dogs but they more generally have this figure “Z” either simply, as the woman are generally marked with it, on every joint of their fingers and toes and often round the outside of their feet, or in different figures of it as square, circles, crescents, etc. “This they do by inlaying the color black under their skins in such a manner as to be indelible everyone is marked thus in different parts of his body accordingly maybe to his humor or different circumstances of his life. The first record on tattoos was written in August 1769, when Banks wrote in his journal: He was also the person who adopted the Polynesian word ‘tatau’ or ‘tattow’ into the English lexicon – the word we all know today as ‘tattoo’. To be strictly accurate, it was the famous naturalist, Sir Joseph Banks – on board HMS Endeavour as a botanist – who became the first westerner to record the details of ‘native tattoos’. It was during Captain Cook’s first voyage, which commenced in 1766, that he first encountered tattoos on the Polynesian Island of Tahiti. What is lesser known is his pivotal role in introducing the art of tattooing to the sailors of the world, who in turn made it widely known to the western world in general. He traveled thousands of miles across uncharted oceans, from New Zealand and Australia, to the Pacific Islands, to Hawaii, mapping in great detail the seas, the lands and the coastlines he encountered and gave many islands, places, rivers, and towns their present-day names. Most of you are at least vaguely aware that the great British explorer, Captain James Cook, led three epic voyages of discovery between 17, captaining three famous royal navy ships – HMS Endeavour, HMS Resolution, and finally, HMS Discovery.
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