Embodied History by Simon P. Newman

Author:Simon P. Newman [Newman, Simon P.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780812218480
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press, Inc.
Published: 2003-05-16T00:00:00+00:00

TABLE 8. Subjects of Seafarers’ Tattoos

Number of tattoos

Percent

Maritime images

262

22

Sailor’s name or initials

240

20

Name or initials of another

197

16.5

Religious images

110

9

Love and loved ones

89

7.5

Patriotic and political images

71

6

People, flowers, other images

66

5.5

Dates

33

3

Masonic images

13

1

Miscellaneous

111

9.5

Source: 500 Seamen’s Protection Certificate Applications detailing tattoos, 1798-1816, Record Group 36, Records of the Bureau of Customs, National Archives.

The smallest category of tattoos displayed a similar pride in professional membership, while simultaneously proclaiming allegiance to an institution on land: five of the sailors in this sample wore tattoos of Masonic emblems. Particularly vivid were the tattoos of thirty-year-old James Henry of Philadelphia, who had “a Compass & Square, a Ladder, an hour Glass, and five points of fellow Ship, [and] the all seeing Eye” tattooed on his left arm, while twenty-eight-year-old William Watson was tattooed with a “Compass & Square, Ladder … Masonic arch, square & compass.”51 John Berry and James Henry went so far as to have their lodge numbers inscribed on their bodies.52 Such images suggest that these men were no longer common sailors. Some of the men who made a career out of seafaring eventually acquired higher status as masters, mates, and supercargoes.53 None of the 500 applications in this sample make any mention of higher rank or status, and almost all these men appear to have toiled before the mast, but it is possible that these five seafarers had risen to higher rank and status, both on board ship and ashore, and had joined the Masons. While it is true that in the aftermath of the American Revolution, Freemasonry had become significantly more accessible to a broad crosssection of urban white males, the institution remained all but inaccessible to ordinary mariners. Only sailors of higher rank could have availed themselves of the opportunity to join this organization of skilled and relatively well-paid professionals and craftsmen.54 By the mid-1780s, the cost of membership in Philadelphia lodges ran as high as $30—as much as a month’s salary for a common seafarer or laborer—and most Masons hailed from the professional ranks of merchants, manufacturers, storekeepers, or skilled craftsmen.55 With an average age of twenty-eight, the five sailors who wore Masonic tattoos were generally several years older than the seafarers in this sample, which suggests that these men had spent even longer at sea and that they might well have risen in rank and status to the point where they were able to join a Masonic lodge. The tension between the fact that these seafarers valued their membership in a society of men who lived and worked on land, while yet celebrating it with tattoos that marked them as men who worked the seas for a living, is a tension suggested by many of the tattoos worn by professional sailors generally.

The large number (21 percent) of tattoos that featured the name or initials of the bearer could function as proud assertions of personal identity within the seafaring profession, or as the means of ensuring correct identification should the sailor die away from home. John Fenton of New York City was one of the

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