Black ink tattoo of an anchor woven through an infinity symbol, with the script words 'I refuse to sink' beneath it, on a person's back.

Anchor and infinity with 'I refuse to sink' script

Lettering · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A black ink tattoo shows an anchor whose shank passes through the loops of an infinity symbol, with the rope of the anchor forming part of the curve. Beneath it, a fine cursive script reads 'I refuse to sink'. The ink is solid black with clean, even linework on warm skin, and the design is centred in a close, slightly dim photograph.

Lettering Back Anchor Infinity symbol Script Quote Text

Find an artist for this

Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The cook had the galley hatch wedged open with a coil of tarred line, and the swell came through it in gusts that smelled of diesel and cold iron. Marguerite Vaux pressed a thumb into the dough and watched the rain sheet sideways past the porthole. Third day of gale. Forty-one souls aboard the Kittiwake, and the only thing she could feed them was flour and whatever the bosun's boy hadn't dropped overboard.

Keep reading

Fergus came down the ladder with his oilskins streaming and a face like a wet slate. He didn't say the word. He didn't need to. Everyone on a boat knows the word, and it's always the one you're not allowed to say at table. He just held out his hand, palm up, and in it was the brass shackle from the spare anchor, green with age, its pin seized solid.

"Found it in the lazarette," he said. "Old Harrow must have stowed it there before the war."

Marguerite took it and turned it over. Someone had scratched a little loop into the brass, the sign for forever, and beside it four words, half worn away. She could just make out the start of them and the end. She ran her thumbnail along the letters the way she'd smooth a crust.

By the time the bread came out of the oven, the wind had dropped to a mutter. The crew ate standing up, wet and quiet, and nobody asked her what the shackle was for. She tore the loaf in two and gave Fergus the bigger half. Above them, through the deckhead, the anchor chain began to sing as the Kittiwake found her footing again.