Black and grey traditional-style anchor tattoo wrapped in rope with two starfish, script lettering on the shank and 6:19 on the crown, on the side of the torso.

Anchor with rope and starfish on the side

Traditional · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A large anchor wrapped in rope, with a starfish on the upper stock and another on the fluke near the lower right. Script lettering runs along the shank, and the crown carries the numerals 6:19. The anchor is shaded in grey with soft highlights and dark outlines, set against lightly tanned skin.

Traditional Ribs Anchor Rope Starfish Script Numeral

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mind the puddle by the fish slab, it's deeper than it looks, and don't stand under that gutter if you value your collar. Now. You want the anchor story, or you'll stand there dripping over my cockles? Sit on the crate. The rain's been at Brindle Quay since Tuesday and it won't stop till the tide turns, so we've time.

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Old Ada Pennock kept the rope stall at the top of the market, under a tarpaulin that sagged like a wet belly. Her grandson Tom went out on the Mary Ellen one November with four crew and a spaniel. The boat came home without him, but it came home with an anchor wrapped in Ada's own rope, sun-bleached and crusted white. Tom had cut it loose himself, so the story goes, when the chain fouled on the reef off Sorrow Point. Nobody believed the bit about the starfish until they saw two of them clinging to the stock and the fluke, orange and stubborn, as if they'd been waiting for a ride.

Ada hung it over her counter. Every morning she rubbed the shank with a rag and traced the letters cut into it, which the salt had nearly eaten away. Believe, she'd say, though to the rest of us it looked more like a smudge. The crown carried the numbers six and nineteen. The vicar swore it was a verse, and the lads swore it was the fathoms over the reef. Ada only laughed and said nobody ever asked what the anchor was for, only whether it would hold.

The spring she finally took the tarpaulin down, a girl from the chandlery came asking to buy it for her brother's birthday. Ada wouldn't take money. She wrapped the rope tighter round the stock, pressed the loose starfish back into place with her thumb, and handed it over. The girl carried it off down the wet cobbles, the rain beading on the rope, and Ada stood in the doorway a long while after she'd gone.