The following is a brief excerpt from Tattoo History: A Source Book, by Stephen G. Gilbert now available in print.

Tattoo History Source Book: Giolo

In September of 1691 a tattooed Polynesian slave was brought to London to be exhibited as a curiosity. His owners went to great pains to promote his public appearances: they arranged to have two full-length portraits engraved and published as illustrations for an elegantly printed pamphlet which introduced him as "Giolo, the Famous Painted Prince."

Prince Giolo did not want to visit London. His owners, however, had told him that he would be handsomely paid for his public appearances and would afterward be allowed to return to his home in the Philippines. But the journey to England was arduous and Giolo, who was in poor health when he arrived, soon died of smallpox. This was a great disappointment for his ambitious English owners, who had hoped he would live long enough to make them rich.

Prince Giolo had been brought to London by an adventurer and buccaneer named William Dampier. It was the dawn of the golden age of piracy: Captain Kidd, Henry Morgan and Blackbeard Teach were operating out of headquarters in Southern Mexico and enjoying profitable careers. Dampier, however, was not one of the world¹s great pirates. For over 12 years he had traveled up and down to coast of South America, changing allegiance from one gang of pirates to another as he thought to better his position. But the pirates with whom he traveled did not capture Spanish Galleons laden with gold, diamonds and pretty ladies. Instead, their routine work consisted of the safer, if less profitable, business of robbing defenseless villages and small coastal vessels. It turned out to be much work for little money, and after ten years of this strenuous life Dampier signed on with a ship headed for the Philippines.

It was while he was in the Philippines that Dampier first saw Giolo, whom he acquired from a ship¹s officer named William Moody. Dampier described his adventures in the Pacific and his meeting with Giolo in a popular travel book, A New Voyage Round the World (1697), from which the following passages are taken.