The Short Answer
For generations, sailors were regarded in parts of Europe as carriers of good fortune.
One particularly persistent custom held that touching a sailor — especially the collar of his uniform — could transfer some of that luck to the person doing the touching.
The belief seems to have been strongest in northern Europe and Scandinavia, where sailors returning safely from long voyages were sometimes treated as unusually fortunate men.
A US Navy historical account from 1975 described an old Scandinavian belief that seamen who had successfully completed a long voyage possessed luck that could be passed on by touch. In Oslo, the account said, people specifically touched the stars on the back of a sailor’s collar.
Why the collar itself became the focus is less certain.
And, as with many maritime customs, later generations supplied several explanations.
What We Know
The sailor’s broad square collar became one of the most recognisable parts of naval dress during the nineteenth century.
The Royal Navy formally standardised uniform for ratings in 1857, and versions of the familiar sailor suit subsequently appeared across numerous navies.
The large flap collar became so closely associated with sailors that it eventually spread into civilian clothing, particularly children’s sailor suits.
Alongside the uniform came folklore.
Sailors occupied a peculiar place in popular imagination. They travelled beyond familiar horizons, survived storms and shipwrecks, returned from foreign ports and lived with dangers that most people on shore would never encounter.
A sailor who had returned safely from a difficult voyage could therefore be seen as someone who had already enjoyed unusually good fortune.
Touching him offered a way of borrowing some of it.
The Luck of the Returned Sailor
The clearest historical explanation comes from Scandinavia.
A story preserved by the US Naval History and Heritage Command describes American sailors visiting Oslo and repeatedly being tapped on the back by strangers.
The explanation given to them was that there was an old Scandinavian belief that sailors who had just completed a long voyage were lucky.
By touching such a sailor, that luck might be transferred.
More specifically, people were said to touch the stars on the back of the sailor’s collar.
This is important because it suggests that the collar itself may not originally have possessed magical significance.
The sailor did.
The collar simply became the most recognisable and accessible part of the uniform to touch.
Survival Was Its Own Kind of Luck
To understand why such a belief could develop, it helps to remember how dangerous seafaring once was.
A long voyage in the age of sail meant storms, disease, accidents aloft, shipwreck, fire, collision and the constant possibility of drowning.
Returning home safely was not something sailors could take entirely for granted.
A man walking ashore after months — sometimes years — at sea had quite literally survived hazards that had killed many others.
It is easy to see how popular folklore could transform survival into supernatural good fortune.
The sailor had beaten the sea.
Perhaps some of his luck might rub off.
Why the Collar?
This is where certainty disappears.
The custom is well attested.
The explanation for why the collar specifically was touched is not.
One possibility is simply visibility.
The broad blue collar, edged with white stripes, was one of the sailor’s most distinctive features. It marked him immediately as a seaman, particularly when viewed from behind.
In some naval uniforms, stars or decorative elements also appeared at the back of the collar, giving people a specific point to touch.
Over time, a habit of touching the sailor could therefore become a habit of touching the sailor’s collar.
The Tempting Explanation
Like many features of naval uniform, the collar accumulated stories.
Perhaps the most famous says that the three white stripes around a sailor’s collar represented Admiral Nelson’s three great victories — the Nile, Copenhagen and Trafalgar.
It is an appealing story.
It also appears to be false.
The US Naval History and Heritage Command notes that historians have found no evidence supporting the Nelson explanation. Different numbers of collar stripes were once worn, and the eventual adoption of three appears to have been a matter of uniform standardisation rather than commemoration.
The same caution applies to attempts to explain the collar-touching superstition through the meaning of its stripes.
The lucky custom appears to be older and broader than any convincing symbolic interpretation of the decoration.
Sailors and Borrowed Luck
The idea also belongs to a much wider family of folk beliefs.
Across European tradition, certain people were sometimes believed to possess transferable luck because of what they did or what they had survived.
Chimney sweeps became associated with good fortune at weddings.
Soldiers returning safely from battle could acquire similar reputations.
Objects belonging to travellers, soldiers and sailors could become charms precisely because their owners had survived danger.
The sailor fits neatly into this pattern.
His luck had already been tested.
Touching him was a small act of sympathetic magic: contact with a fortunate person might make you fortunate too.
From Sailor to Uniform
Once the sailor suit became instantly recognisable, the belief gradually attached itself to the clothing.
Descriptions of sailor suits still frequently note that touching a sailor’s collar was considered lucky.
That transition is typical of folklore.
First the person is lucky.
Then something worn by the person becomes lucky.
Eventually, the object may retain the superstition even when nobody remembers the reason behind it.
What the Evidence Actually Says
There is good evidence that the custom existed.
There is also reasonably strong documentary evidence that, at least in Scandinavia, the logic behind it was the safe return of the sailor from a voyage.
What we do not have is a neat moment of invention.
There is no known Admiralty order declaring sailors lucky.
There is no documented ceremony establishing the collar as a charm.
And there is no convincing evidence that its white stripes, shape or supposed Nelson symbolism created the superstition.
The tradition appears instead to have grown organically from an older and very human idea:
A sailor who had returned from the sea had been lucky.
Perhaps luck could be shared.
Different Elsewhere
The precise form of the superstition varied.
Some accounts simply describe touching a sailor.
Others specifically mention touching the collar.
The Scandinavian tradition recorded by the US Navy went further still, identifying the stars on the back of the collar as the lucky point of contact.
That variation is useful evidence in itself.
It suggests we are dealing with folklore rather than a single formal naval custom.
Folklore changes as it travels.
Why It Stuck
Sailors have always attracted superstition.
They lived in a world where weather could change without warning, ships could disappear without trace and survival often depended upon forces beyond human control.
That environment produced elaborate beliefs about albatrosses, bananas, whistling, cats, Fridays, ship names and countless other signs of good or bad fortune.
The lucky sailor belongs to the same world.
But this superstition travelled ashore.
The sailor became a walking good-luck charm.
And the broad blue collar — perhaps the most distinctive part of his uniform — became the obvious place to reach out and touch.
A tiny gesture.
A borrowed piece of luck.
And another maritime habit whose original meaning largely disappeared while the story survived.
Sources & Further Reading
US Naval History and Heritage Command — Historical Surveys of the Evolution of US Navy Uniforms
US Naval History and Heritage Command — Pants/Bell-Bottoms
Sailors’ Superstitions