Colour tattoo of an anchor with a pink bow, a sailing ship inside a pink rope ring and a small heart, on a person's upper back.

Anchor and sailing ship on a back

Traditional · Back · Colour · Photo

A large anchor tattoo sits centred on the upper back, topped with a pink bow and a pale lilac loop. Inside a pink rope ring is a white-sailed ship on teal waves beneath soft blue clouds, with a purple and yellow shield-like panel and a pink heart at the base. The bold black outlines and flat pastel fills of pink, lilac, teal and blue give it a traditional, cartoon-like finish, and the photo is taken from directly behind with the head turned away.

Traditional Back Anchor Ship Sailing ship Bow Ribbon Heart Cloud Wave Rope

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

At ten past three the ward at Fenmoor Cottage Hospital had gone quiet enough that Ruth could hear the sea through the fire door propped open for the smokers' bench. She was counting linen in the store when Dev came in from the corridor holding a paper carrier bag like it might bite him.

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"Mrs Oakes wants her ship back," he said. "Says the night staff keep moving it."

The ship hung above bed six on a loop of pink ribbon, a card sailing vessel with white sails cut from an old tea towel and a blue sea painted in poster paint that had bled at the edges. Mrs Oakes had folded it herself the summer she came to Fenmoor as a girl, working the pattern from a ladies' weekly her mother kept under the stairs. Ruth found it lying on the sluice shelf, the ribbon slipped off and tangled with a bandage roll, one sail torn loose at the top.

She sat on the step stool and mended it with a dab of medical tape and a steady hand, then tied the ribbon into a bow the way her own gran used to, two loops and a tuck. Dev watched from the doorway, scratching his jaw. "She'll only say it's crooked."

Ruth hung the ship back over bed six and straightened it with one finger. In the morning, Mrs Oakes would certainly tell her it was crooked, and Ruth would say that the sea was never flat in Fenmoor, and they would both pretend the ribbon hadn't been her idea.