Saturday, November 16, 2013

Picture puzzle: what are the sailing connections?


9 comments:

Tillerman said...

David Dimbleby got this tattoo while making the maritime series, Britain and the Sea, for the BBC.

Towpath Tanya said...

Aw, the Tillerman's telling porkies again!

That tat is Buff's. And he's another on his, well, he's got another is all.

JP said...

Tillerman is right but there's more connections, not just the one

As to Tanya's comment, well this is a family friendly blog so it might be better to say simply that Buff is looking very sheepish (and not in a Welsh way)

Tillerman said...

Well, there is also a sailing dinghy called a Scorpion.

JP said...

I'm thinking about where tattooing came from and who introduced it into the UK......

Tillerman said...

According to Wikipedia which is never wrong...

Sir Martin Frobisher on his second voyage to find a north west passage to China took prisoner a native Inuit man and a woman with a child, the woman having tattoos on her chin and forehead was a great attraction at the court of Elizabeth I.

In 1691 William Dampier brought to London a native of the western part of New Guinea who had a tattooed body and became known as the "Painted Prince".

Between 1766 and 1779, Captain James Cook made three voyages to the South Pacific. When Cook and his men returned home to Europe from their voyages to Polynesia, they told tales of the 'tattooed savages' they had seen. The word "tattoo" itself comes from the Tahitian tatau, and was introduced into the English language by Cook's expedition.

Cook's Science Officer and Expedition Botanist, Sir Joseph Banks, returned to England with a tattoo.

Cook brought back with him a tattooed Raiatean man, Omai, whom he presented to King George and the English Court. Many of Cook's men, ordinary seamen and sailors, came back with tattoos, a tradition that would soon become associated with men of the sea in the public's mind and the press of the day.

Tillerman said...

Also according to Wikipedia which is never wrong...

The island of Great Britain takes its name from tattooing; Britons translates as "people of the designs", and Picts, the peoples who originally inhabited the northern part of Britain, literally means "the painted people."

JP said...

Yeh! Cook is the answer according to Dimbleby's tv show as confirmed by Wikipedia which is never wrong. It was about how the word and practice of tattooing got to Britain.

JP said...

And the Picts have a sailing link via a certain Arthur Ransome book.