Colour tattoo on a forearm in a traditional style, showing a grey anchor wrapped in chain, a pocket watch with Roman numerals and red roses.

Anchor, pocket watch and roses on a forearm

Traditional · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A large forearm piece shows a grey anchor with chain wrapped around its shank, a pocket watch with Roman numerals and hands set in front of it, and two red roses with dark green leaves above. The anchor and watch are shaded in greys with bold outlines and highlights, while the roses carry red and pink tones. The design fills the forearm from the wrist to just below the elbow, with the watch and roses at the top and the anchor's flukes lower down.

Traditional Forearm Anchor Pocket watch Clock Rose Chain Roman numeral Leaves

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The harbour bell had struck twelve when Tamsin Vell finally took the pocket watch down from its nail, though the tide was still climbing the steps and the boats were knocking against the quay like impatient guests.

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Every dawn for nineteen years she had wound it, and every dawn its hands had pointed at the same hour, the one the storm had come in on. The men of Calder Reach said the sea was keeping time for her. Her son Piers had gone out on the Gull's Wing with the anchor chain still wrapped round her shank, and the chain had come back without him. She had hung the watch on the cottage door and let the roses climb the wall beneath it, red and stubborn, because roses in Calder would grow on salt and grief alike.

That morning she carried the watch down to the wall where the old anchor lay in the shallows, its flukes furred with weed. She knelt on the cold stone, unhooked the rusted links from the iron, and felt the chain go slack in her hands. The watch gave one small tick against her palm, then another, and the second hand began its slow walk round the dial as if it had only been resting.

She did not wait to see where the hands would settle. She dropped the chain into the tide, stood up with wet knees, and wound the watch once more, thumb and finger steady. Then she walked home, leaving the anchor where it belonged, and hung the watch back on its nail beside the roses.