Black and grey traditional style flash design of an anchor, a sailing ship, two pistols, roses and banners reading Loose Lips and Sink Ships, with no body placement shown.

Anchor, ship and pistols traditional flash

Traditional · Black and grey · Flash

A symmetrical design centred on a ship under sail on rolling waves, framed by a large anchor at the top and two crossed pistols on either side. Roses and leaves sit in the corners, with rope curving around a sunburst behind the ship, and two banners carry the words Loose Lips and Sink Ships. Bold solid black fills, fine white linework and grey tones are set on a plain light background.

Traditional Anchor Ship Sailing ship Pistol Rose Rope Wave Banner Sunburst Leaves

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit down, the lot of you, and leave that kettle alone. I've told this story at every wake on this quay for forty years, and I'll tell it properly tonight. I won't say the names of the men who were there, for the sea keeps its own counsel and so should we.

Keep reading

It was the spring of 1917, and my grandfather was bosun on the barque Harriet Vane, loading coal at Cardiff for the Plate. The master, a grim Scot called Ansell, kept a pair of silver-mounted pistols in a box under his bunk, and every man aboard knew it. Young Dunstan Crake had a face like a polished spoon and a mouth to match. One evening he found the box unlatched and thought it a grand thing to talk about. He told the landlady at the Dolphin the sailing day, the course, the coal in the hold, and how the master slept with his pistols loaded in case of German submarines.

The landlady had a nephew who drank with a man who was not what he seemed. Three nights later the Harriet Vane was boarded off Lundy in the fog, and the coal went down with her, and two of the lads with it. Crake came ashore in a borrowed coat, bragging still, and he was on the next steamer out before anyone thought to ask him a thing.

My grandfather never spoke a word against him. He just oiled the pistols every Sunday and hung them on the wall above the stove, where you can see them now, and when he was dying he made me promise to keep the mouth shut. So I'm telling you this once, and then the kettle's on.