Traditional style tattoo of a red and white striped airship with sails, rigging and clouds on the upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Airship with sails and clouds on upper arm

Traditional · Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

A large airship or hot air balloon with a red and white striped envelope hangs above a sailing hull with billowing sails, a small flag at the top and a gold-trimmed gondola. Clouds with grey shading frame the design, which uses bold black outlines and soft grey shading. The palette is mainly red, white, grey and yellow, with red wash around the clouds and the tattoo sits on a fleshy upper arm against a dark background.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom, you will not credit what came over the top of the Glebe pit on Tuesday. The men had the cage stopped halfway down so they could look, and Dad says they all stood at the bottom of the shaft with their lamps turned up like it was Whit Walks. A ship with sails hung under a great balloon striped red and white, the same colours as Mam's Sunday ribbon, and it slid across the sky above the winding wheel as if the sea had simply gone missing and it had come looking for it.

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It was low enough to see the gold rail round the little gondola and a man in a peaked cap leaning on it, smoking a pipe like he had paid for the view. The sails were full though there was no wind to speak of, and the rigging hummed against the ropes. Mrs Eccles swore there was a dog on the deck. Pryce the checkweighman said it was some rich man's wager and the lads called him soft for saying so, but nobody laughed when the thing dipped its bow over the tip and the clouds round it went pink from underneath.

Then a canvas bag came down on a length of cord and landed in the slack beside the lamp room. Inside was a little flag, the same red as the one on its mast, and a card with no name on it, only the words Keep the rope for the next one. I have it pinned above the kettle now. Mr Eccles reckons it is a joke, but he has taken to standing in the yard every evening with his face tipped up.

Write back soon and tell me what the sky looks like over the ports. Give my love to the lodgings and mind the roof beams.

Your brother, Joe

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