Side-by-side photos of a traditional-style anchor tattoo with a heart-shaped top and a pink bow, shaded in black and grey on the foot near the ankle.

Anchor with heart and pink bow on a foot

Traditional · Ankle · Mixed · Photo

The tattoo shows a bold anchor with a heart-shaped loop at the top and a pink bow tied around the shank, both shown from two angles in the same photo pair. The anchor is outlined in black and shaded in greys to give it volume, while the bow has pink fills with lighter highlights. The image is well lit and close-cropped, so the tattoo is the clear focus against the skin.

Traditional Ankle Anchor Heart Bow

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The bosun at Pellmouth Quay swore the anchor on the Marigold Jane had never once been lowered in anger, only in courtesy, and that was why it had a bow on it. Everyone laughed at that, including Tamsin Rook, who had come down from the Scillies with a sack of wet netting and a grudge against the harbour master. She was nineteen and had signed on as deckhand because the cook was her uncle and the wages were honest.

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The bow had been her idea, painted on the shank with a tin of pink lead the week before the fleet sailed for the Dogger. Her mother had said a ship named after a bread roll needed no ornament, and her father had said nothing at all, which was how he disapproved. So Tamsin crept down to the hold at midnight with a brush and a candle stub and tied a bow around the iron where the chain met the stock. In the morning the crew found it, and no one had the heart to scrape it off.

They lost the Dogger fleet to a squall off the Shingles, but the Marigold Jane came home with her anchor still hanging and her bow still bright beneath the salt. When the harbour master came down to inspect the hull he stopped at the bow, looked at it for a long while, and asked whose knot it was. Tamsin said it was a granny knot, which was a lie, and he laughed and said he'd never once seen a granny knot that held a ship together.