Black anchor with a pink bow and heart knot tattooed on the upper back of a person with short hair, in a traditional style.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Anchor and pink bow on upper back

Traditional · Back · Mixed · Photo

The photo shows the upper back of a person with short hair, with a black anchor tattoo centred between the shoulder blades. A pink bow with a small heart at its knot is layered over the shank of the anchor, and two black arcs of the anchor's flukes extend to either side. The black outlines and solid fills give it a bold, flat look, with the pink as the only colour against the skin.

Traditional Back Anchor Bow Ribbon Heart

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The bosun said an anchor would never hold with a ribbon on it, and I told him that was rubbish, because Maggie had tied the bow herself on the quay at Falmouth with a length of pink grosgrain she'd nicked from the haberdasher's on Market Street. Three weeks out, the Ebba Rose was crossing the Bay with a hold full of Baltic timber and a sky the colour of wet slate, and nobody wanted to argue with the bosun about anything.

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On the fourth night the sea came over the bow like a lorry through a flooded ford. The chain ran out with a noise like a church bell dropped down a well, and the anchor kept dragging. I went forward along the rail with a torch clamped in my teeth. The bow was still there, soaked dark, the pink gone the colour of a boiled sweet, its little heart knotted tight over the shank while the flukes bit at nothing but black water.

We rode out the blow and limped into Lisbon with one hatch cover missing and the cook swearing in three languages. Nobody mentioned the ribbon. I thought about it while we were discharging, and I thought about how many things on that ship had failed us that night, and how the only thing that held was a bit of cloth that had no business holding anything.

When we docked at Hull there was a parcel waiting at the agent's office. Inside was another length of pink grosgrain and a note in Maggie's looping hand: Tie it tighter this time. I did, up on the forecastle with the wind in my face. The bosun watched from the wheelhouse door and said nothing, which from him is as good as a blessing.