Traditional style tattoo design of a black anchor, red heart and banner reading SORRY MOM, shown printed on white fabric with no body part visible.

Anchor and heart with SORRY MOM banner

Traditional · Mixed · Flash

A bold traditional style design showing an anchor wrapped by a red heart with a white banner reading SORRY MOM across its centre. A dagger with a red handle sits at the top left, framed by black leaves and small radiating marks. Black and grey shading gives the anchor and dagger depth, set against flat red fills on white fabric.

Traditional Anchor Heart Banner Dagger Lettering Leaves

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mam, the cook reckons we'll raise Montevideo by Thursday if the wind holds, and I've put the last of my wages in a tin for you so the rent man can't say a word. Don't bother writing to the ship, there's no address that finds us out here. Just keep the lamp in the front window the way you did when Dad was late off the tide.

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You were right about the salt. It gets into everything on this boat, the biscuit, the blankets, the boots I beat with a marlin spike every morning before the bosun comes round. Last Tuesday a squall tore the jib clean off its stay, and Tomas Reyes, who sings hymns in Portuguese when he thinks nobody's listening, went up the ratlines in the dark without being asked. I stood at the wheel and watched him and thought of you at the sink, telling me I'd never last a week.

So this is me saying it properly. Sorry, Mam. Sorry for the door I slammed, for the things I shouted, for not writing from Liverpool. There's an old sea chest under my bunk, and the carpenter let me paint its lid. I put an anchor on it, with a red heart wound round the shank and a white ribbon across the middle. The words on the ribbon are the ones I couldn't say to your face, so I've left them in the paint where the men can read them and laugh.

The lamp's on in my head every night, Mam. I can see it from the foredeck when the fog lifts. Tell Nell the chest is coming home with me, and I'll open it on the kitchen table so you can see the lid for yourself.