Hand-drawn black line sketch of an anchor rising from curling waves, with the Latin lettering fluctuat nec mergitur along the lower wave, shown as a tattoo design on paper.

Anchor and waves design with Latin lettering

Lettering · Black and grey · Flash

The drawing shows a vertical anchor with a ring at the top and a crossbar, rising between stylised curling waves. Lettering follows the lower curve of the waves, reading fluctuat nec mergitur in hand-drawn script. It is done in plain black ink with clean, even outlines on a cream background, with the design centred in the frame.

Lettering Anchor Wave Latin text Sea

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The brass anchor had sat on the sill of Saltcombe school for as long as anyone could remember, and when the class of 1974 came back for their reunion, Alan Pascoe was the first to pick it up and say it was lighter than he recalled. Nobody had the heart to tell him it weighed the same. They had all been small once, and things seemed heavier then.

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Everyone knew the tale of Nell Trewin, who kept the ferry across the bar when the winter gales came in. She rowed the children home from the far side each day, and when the boat pitched and wallowed she shouted the words cut into the bench under her seat: fluctuat nec mergitur. Tossed, not sunk. Old Mr Rowe, who taught them Latin until his voice gave out, said it was the motto of some city across the sea, but the fishermen said it was simply what you told a boat.

One February the bar broke and the ferry went under with its oars still locked, and Nell was never found. The children grew up. They forgot her face and kept the words, the way children keep things they cannot pronounce. At the reunion the hall smelled of cold pastry and wet coats, and Alan read the lettering aloud, stumbling over the last word, until a woman at the back finished it for him in a hard Cornish voice she had not used in forty years.

Afterwards they chained the anchor back to the sill, and the woman carried a slice of pie down to the slipway and set it on the stones where the ferry used to land. The tide came in over it, slow and patient, and by morning it was gone.