Watercolour-style drawing of a tattoo design showing an anchor wrapped in rope, with a death's-head hawkmoth, two compasses, lightning flags and two revolvers.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Anchor with moth, compasses and revolvers

Mixed · Flash

A detailed design of a ship's anchor with a coiled rope wrapped around the shank and a death's-head hawkmoth across the centre. Two compass roses sit on either side of the shank, with two revolvers along the flukes and lightning-bolt flags at the top. The shading is soft and muted, in grey, sepia and earthy greens and yellows, with fine hatching on the wood and metal.

Anchor Rope Moth Skull Compass Revolver Flag Lightning bolt Leaves Wood

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom, the wind has backed round to the south-west and the gulls have given up on the gallery rail, so I am writing this on the lamp-room step where the glass keeps off the spray. Your parcel came over on the Tuesday boat. I have unwrapped it three times and wrapped it up again each time, because Mr Pryce says a thing like that should stay in its canvas until someone with a licence comes asking.

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The anchor is heavier than it looks. Rope still coils round the shank, tarred black where the salt has not bitten, and someone has cut a hawkmoth into the wood with a knife, its skull marked across the back as neatly as a sailmaker's stitch. Two revolvers are lashed along the flukes as if they were meant to hold the ship still in a squall. Between them sit two compass roses, one needle fixed west, the other east, and a pair of pennants with lightning bolts that nobody on this coast has flown since the Heron went missing.

The log you sent says the Heron went down off Scarrow Bank, nine miles north. But the roses are set to a bearing that runs straight through this rock. I walked the gallery with a lantern last night and checked it twice. Whoever carved this knew exactly where a light would stand, and wanted it found from here. Under the moth, scratched small, are my initials, E.M., and the year I took this post. I have no memory of making such a mark, and I have never owned a knife that good.

I am not selling it, Tom. Bring the boat round on Thursday if the sea allows and we will take it out past the bank to wherever the needles point. Until then I will keep the lamp turning. When I climbed up tonight a pale hawkmoth was beating itself against the glass, round and round the light, as though it had been sent to fetch someone home.

Ned