While celebrating passing one million pages views on the blog, it seems worthwhile to take a look back at the single most popular post.  It was Sailor’s Tattoos – Pigs, Chickens, Swallows, and Tattooed Backsides, from December 1, 2008, which has been viewed almost 27,000 times.  That is less than 3% of all pageviews but is still around three times higher than its closest competitor.

Sailor’s Tattoos – Pigs, Chickens, Swallows, and Tattooed Backsides

Tattoos have become very popular of late. Tattoo Facts & Statistics notes that “thirty-six percent of those ages 18 to 25, and 40 percent of those ages 26 to 40, have at least one tattoo, according to a fall 2006 survey by the Pew Research Center.” As popular as tattoos are with twenty and thirty somethings, sailors have been marking their bodies for most of history.

Many years ago a retired ship’s captain told me that his youth deckhands often had “HOLD FAST” tattooed across the knuckles of their hands so they wouldn’t fall when they went aloft. They also often had a pig tattooed on one foot and chicken the other which was supposed to protect you from drowning. He told me that he never figured out which foot was supposed to be tattooed with the chicken and which with the pig. He would say, with a twinkle in his eye, that he never got the tattoos because he was afraid of getting them on the wrong feet.

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