Black and grey engraved-style drawing of a vintage anchor wrapped in rope, with the script words Refuse to sink beneath it on a white background.

Anchor with rope and Refuse to sink script

Black and grey · Flash

A detailed line drawing of a vintage ship's anchor with a ring at the top, a rope coiled around the shank, and cross-hatched shading on the curved arms. The words Refuse to sink are written underneath in a flowing black script. The design is shown in black ink on a plain white background, centred on the page.

Anchor Rope Script Nautical

Find an artist for this

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

You find the anchor in the boathouse under a tarpaulin, its ring rusted orange where the chain once ran through it. Your father always said the Marrow brothers pulled it off a wreck in the Solent before the war, and that it had never once dragged. Tonight the wind is north-east and the fishing smack Constance is somewhere beyond the Skerry, her engine dead, her skipper shouting into a radio that gives him nothing but hiss.

Keep reading

The lamp has to be lit by hand because the mechanism seized in January. You climb the spiral to the gallery with the paraffin can knocking your shin on every turn, and the glass is so cold it stings. Below, the sea works at the rocks as if it has all night. You strike the match, cup it, and watch the wick take. The beam swings out over the water and finds nothing, then a white crest, then a hull lurching in the trough.

Down on the slipway, the old anchor is lashed to the rescue cart, its rope coiled the way your grandfather taught you, three turns round the shank and a hitch that will not slip. Someone has chalked words on the stock, and the rain keeps washing them away, but you learned to read them before you learned to swim: refuse to sink. You do not read them now. You are too busy shouting the bearing down the cliff path.

The Constance comes in at half past two on a line thrown from the rocks, the anchor dragged the last twenty yards by four men and a donkey. When the skipper climbs ashore he looks up at the lamp and lifts one hand, and you stay in the gallery with the cold glass against your palm and keep the light burning until dawn.