Black and grey tattoo of an anchor wrapped in rope with a ship's wheel in the centre, on the forearm of a man in a white t-shirt.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Anchor, rope and ship's wheel on a forearm

Traditional · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A black and grey tattoo of a ship's anchor with a coiled rope wrapped around the shank and a ship's wheel sitting over the centre. The linework is bold, with soft grey shading that gives the metal and rope a three-dimensional look. The design fills the frame on the inner forearm, with the anchor's lower flukes curving out toward the bottom edge.

Traditional Forearm Anchor Rope Ship's wheel Nautical

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom,

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The wheel came off the Marigold on Tuesday, though you'd have laughed at how Mr Pargeter swore at it. He had the whole crew hauling on the rope while the tide went out under us, and the anchor chain came up crusted with weed like something dug from a churchyard. Your father would have known which shackle had rotted. I just stood on the quay with a flask and a bad cold and pretended I understood.

The rope is the thing I keep looking at. Last winter, when you were still home, you spent three evenings splicing an eye into that length of manila, tongue between your teeth, saying a proper knot holds because it lies to nothing. I thought it was boyish nonsense. Now I cannot walk past the chandlery on Fore Street without thinking of your hands on it.

Pargeter says the wheel will go back on the Marigold when she's relaunched in spring, bolted square to the same old shank. He asked whether I wanted the anchor kept as a bollard outside the Ship Inn, where the brass plate already reads Tom Lowry, Apprentice, 1998, though nobody remembers who put it there.

I'll post this with the parcel of socks. Come home when the wheel is on. Mind the mooring lines at Gdansk, and do not let them talk you into a second tot.

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