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Symbol · symbol_protection_from_drowning

Protection from Drowning

An APOTROPAIC meaning specific to seafaring: the motif is worn to prevent drowning. Attested by the National Maritime Museum, which also records the folk reasoning behind it.
Thin
Medium confidenceresearched

3 attested1 source · T1

Registry entry only

The corpus has no enrichment row for this concept (symbols), so it carries its label, description, aliases and provenance and nothing further. No visual traits or cautions are recorded — not because they failed to load, but because that data does not exist in the corpus.

Provenance

1 resolved

  • Facts about tattoos (opens in a new tab)

    Tier 1

    Royal Museums Greenwich

    National Maritime Museum page. Verbatim: the word 'tattoo' is "derived from the Tahitian word 'tatau', meaning to mark"; a pig and a rooster tattooed on the feet were "said to protect a seaman from drowning"; a full-rigged ship, an anchor, a dragon and a shellback turtle each record a specific voyage or crossing. Establishes protective (apotropaic) intent inside the tattoo domain.

    museum · retrieved 2026-08-28

Related concepts

3 links

Can symbolize · 3

  • ← incomingRoosterMotifThin
    strength 0.75researched

    MARITIME CONTEXT, and PAIR-DEPENDENT. Verbatim: "A pig tattooed on one foot and a rooster on the other were said to protect a seaman from drowning." The evidence is for the pair; a lone rooster is not covered by it.

  • ← incomingPigMotifThin
    strength 0.75researched

    MARITIME CONTEXT, and PAIR-DEPENDENT - same sentence as the rooster edge; the museum states the protective claim of the two together.

  • ← incomingPropellerMotifThin
    strength 0.50researched

    PAIR- AND PLACEMENT-CONDITIONAL, exactly like motif_pig and motif_rooster at T11.8a. The Tier 1 museum: “Each propeller was tattooed on a sailor’s butt cheek and was said to prevent drowning”. The evidence covers the pair in that placement; a single propeller elsewhere is not covered, and the museum's own framing is “dark humour” rather than sincere belief.