Traditional-style tattoo of an anchor with wings, rope and a U.S.N. banner on the upper shoulder.

Anchor and wings with U.S.N. banner

Traditional · Shoulder · Mixed · Photo

A tattoo of an anchor with rope wrapped around its shank and a pair of wings spread across the crossbar, with a banner reading U.S.N. above. The linework is bold and outlined, with brown and grey shading giving the metal volume. Yellow-gold rope and a few warm accents sit against the muted brown and grey, and the design is centred on the upper shoulder.

Traditional Shoulder Anchor Wing Rope Banner

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The rain had come in off the estuary before eight and by ten the awning over my stall was sagging like a wet sail, pooling water in the dip where the canvas met the pole. Nobody wants marline in weather like that. So when Walter Pike splashed up the aisle with his collar turned against it, I put the kettle on the paraffin ring and pretended I wasn't pleased to see him.

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He wanted three fathoms of yellow-laid manila, the kind they used on the old supply ships, and he wanted it cut clean. His grandson was off to join the American lads in the spring, he said, and Walter had a notion to hang a proper length of rope on the boy's wall. I measured it against my forearm, which is how my father measured everything, and coiled it in loops that wouldn't kink. The men off the Halberd had taught Walter the bowline in 1944, somewhere past Iceland, with the sea coming green over the rail and a sailor from Ohio chanting the steps of the knot like a hymn.

He paid in coins he counted twice, as always, then stood looking at the rope with his hands in his pockets. 'Seventy years and I still can't tie it one-handed,' he said. I told him nobody could, not in this weather. He laughed and went off up the aisle with the coil under his arm like a sleeping cat.

When the cloud finally broke over the car park, the light came through the wet and caught the gold thread running through the offcut he'd left on my counter, a short piece I'd kept back for myself. I wound it round my wrist and tied the bowline the way I'd been shown, one hand, eyes shut, and it held.