Full-rigged ship
A tattoo of a square-rigged sailing ship. By sailors’ tradition it marked a man who had sailed round Cape Horn, the southern tip of South America.
Meaning
The Naval History and Heritage Command lists the full-rigged ship among traditional sailors’ tattoos as “in commemoration of rounding Cape Horn”, and marks the meaning “antiquated”: it belongs to the days of sail. Royal Museums Greenwich gives the same reading: a full-rigged ship shows the seaman has sailed round Cape Horn. The ship itself has outlived the meaning. Sailors aboard USS Gerald R. Ford in 2017 named wooden ships, with anchors and marlinspikes, among the traditional Navy designs that sailors wear as milestones of a career and memories of travel.
Origin and history
Sailors tattooed particular ships as well as the generic square-rigger. During the Civil War, the Navy’s historians write, tattoos of the clash between the ironclads USS Monitor and CSS Virginia appeared in both navies. After the electric tattoo machine of 1891 made more elaborate designs possible, sailors had detailed pictures of the explosion of USS Maine put on their bodies, and many who fought at Manila Bay in 1898 tattooed likenesses of Commodore George Dewey and his flagship USS Olympia, according to the Independence Seaport Museum’s exhibition “Skin and Bones”.
In what is now called the golden age of tattoos, 1920 to 1950, tattooists with modern machines and brighter inks produced many variations on the classic naval designs, the anchor and the sailing ship among them, the National Museum of the American Sailor’s exhibition “Marked by the Sea” explained.
Other voyage tattoos
The ship is one of a set of tattoos that record where a sailor has been. The Swallow counts the miles, the Shellback turtle marks the equator and the Anchor first marked the Atlantic.
Read next
- Next in Traditional tattoo motifsShellback turtleA sailor’s tattoo for crossing the equator. A sailor who has crossed the line and been initiated by “King Neptune” is a shellback, and the turtle says so.
- The same shape in Animal symbolismDragonfly symbolismIn Japan the dragonfly gave the country a poetic name, Akitsushima, and is said to carry the spirits of the ancestors home at Bon. Zuni potters paint it as a sign of summer rain; English and American folk names call it the devil’s darning-needle and the snake doctor.
See also
Swallow, Anchor, Dragon, Nautical star, Hold fast, Pig and rooster.
Sources
- Sailors’ Tattoos: A Basic Primer, Heritage: customs and traditions, published 4 December 2024 (Internet Archive copy, 29 January 2026), Naval History and Heritage Command (U.S. Navy), Some Traditional Sailors’ Tattoos: Full-rigged ship; history
- Fascinating facts about tattoos, Stories: topics, Royal Museums Greenwich (National Maritime Museum), 10 interesting facts about tattoos
- The Ink of History, Review of “Skin and Bones: Tattoos in the Life of the American Sailor” (Independence Seaport Museum, Philadelphia, 2009; curator Craig Bruns), seen at Mystic Seaport, Commonplace: The Journal of Early American Life, review text
- Of Swallows, Shellbacks, & Sweethearts, by Lt. Col. Patrick Chaisson, MOAA magazine, October 2023: on “Marked by the Sea: Tattoos in the U.S. Navy” at the National Museum of the American Sailor, Great Lakes, Illinois, Military Officers Association of America, Ink then and now
- Naval Ink, by Petty Officer 3rd Class Sean Elliott, USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78) public affairs, 9 August 2017, Defense Visual Information Distribution Service (U.S. Navy), story text
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols formed from curves and waves or lines.
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 9, 2026. How we research
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