Pig and rooster
A pig tattooed on one foot and a rooster on the other: a sailors’ charm against drowning.
Meaning
The Naval History and Heritage Command describes the pairing exactly: a pig on top of the left foot and a rooster on top of the right, “thought to prevent drowning”. Royal Museums Greenwich, the Navy’s National Museum of the American Sailor and the Independence Seaport Museum’s exhibition “Skin and Bones” all record the same belief.
Origin and history
The belief goes back to ships that carried their food alive. In the age of sail, the Navy’s exhibition “Marked by the Sea” explained, pigs and chickens travelled on deck in wooden pens, and after a shipwreck their crates often washed ashore with the animals still alive. The Navy’s historians tell it the same way: if a ship was lost, the pigs and roosters in or on their crates floated free. The review of the Independence Seaport Museum’s exhibition gives the same reason: livestock typically survived shipwrecks.
Two explanations
The sources give the charm two different logics. The Navy’s historians and its museum say the animals floated free and survived, so a sailor who carried them might survive too. Royal Museums Greenwich gives a stranger reason: neither animal can swim, so it was thought they would get the sailor swiftly to shore if he fell in the water.
Pig and chicken
The Navy’s historians and Royal Museums Greenwich say rooster; the Navy’s museum and the Independence Seaport Museum say chicken.
Read next
- Next in Traditional tattoo motifsRope round the wristA ring of braided rope tattooed round the wrist. In the US Navy it marked a deck seaman.
- The same shape in Tarot cardsThree of CupsThe three of cups in the tarot's Minor Arcana: three maidens in a garden raising their cups as if pledging one another. A. E. Waite read it as plenty, happy endings, victory and healing.
See also
Hold fast, Swallow, Anchor, Full-rigged ship, Shellback turtle, Dragon.
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: Pig and rooster
- Fascinating facts about tattoos, Stories: topics, Royal Museums Greenwich (National Maritime Museum), 10 interesting facts about tattoos
- 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, ‘Flash Art’
- 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
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols formed from curves and waves.
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 9, 2026. How we research
Added .