For centuries, tattooing among sailors mostly happened during downtime at sea, applied by hand with needles and tattoo ink made with simple pigments such as soot and gunpowder. These tattoo artists informally developed a graphical vocabulary including nautical images such as mermaids and ships.

In the United States, these sailors turned tattooists trained a generation of professional tattoo artists, who went on to develop the American traditional ("old school") tattoo style by combining sailor traditions with styles and techniques learned from Japanese tattoo artists.