Tom

A massive cowfish fish-man, Tom had a yellow body, stubby horns, and sharp teeth that jutted upward from his lower lip, with a white beard beneath. Dark spots marked the gills on his neck and shadows lay under his eyes, while curly white hair spilled out from under a brown bandanna. An unbuttoned pale-blue patterned shirt left his broad chest exposed, and his comparatively slight lower half was clad in brown trousers and plain boots. Flowery tattoos resembling the emblem of the Sun Pirates decorated both of his shoulders.

Proud, kindly, and remarkably easygoing, Tom could laugh off nearly anything, from the endless squabbling of his pupils to the death sentence hanging over him for crafting Roger's ship. He held no prejudice against humans, building vessels for anyone, pirates included, and took in Franky and Iceburg as both sons and students. Central to his outlook was the conviction that a shipwright must love every craft he makes, whatever harm it later causes; he struck Franky for disowning the Battle Frankies and proudly insisted he regretted nothing about the Oro Jackson, even though that admission amounted to confessing a capital crime. He likewise refused to surrender the Pluton blueprints, and his trademark cry was to do everything "with a DON."

Born on Fish-Man Island, Tom grew up beside his younger brother Den before he and Kokoro relocated to Water 7. More than forty-four years before the present day he constructed the Oro Jackson, the flagship that Gol D. Roger would sail, shaping it from wood of the Treasure Tree Adam, and around twenty-six years ago he took in the abandoned child Franky. After Roger's death the authorities arrested him, since building a vessel for the Pirate King was treated as an exceptional offense. To escape execution he struck a bargain: a decade to rescue the dying Water 7 by constructing the unprecedented Sea Train, the Puffing Tom. His trial doubled as cover for the government's hunt for the Pluton blueprints he secretly held, which drew the ambition of Spandam of Cipher Pol No. 5. When Spandam framed Tom's pupil Cutty Flam, paying men to crew the young shipwright's vessels in an assault on Water 7, Tom shouldered the blame, forfeited his pardon, and was carried off aboard his own Sea Train to Enies Lobby and reportedly executed there not long after.