Black line drawing of a traditional anchor wrapped in rope with two swallows in flight, shown as a tattoo design on a white background.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Anchor with rope and two swallows

Traditional · Black and grey · Flash

The drawing shows a ship's anchor with a rope coiled around its shaft and arms, with a swallow on each side in mid-flight. The linework is bold, even black outlines with simple interior detailing on the birds' wings and tails. It is a flat design in black ink on white with no shading, colour or background.

Traditional Anchor Rope Swallow Bird

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The ropes had been sweating all afternoon, and by the time Joan Pell locked the net loft on Tanner's Stair the fog had come up the river so thick that the lamp on the bollard looked like a coin under water. She had a parcel of marline under one arm and a question she had not asked her brother in eleven years folded in her coat pocket.

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Eli was waiting at the foot of the steps, where the old fluke anchor lay half sunk in the mud, its shank bound in tarred rope that nobody had bothered to cut away. He had come off the Ardent that morning with a canvas bag and no pay. He said the swallows had followed the ship from Gibraltar, dipping around the mast like they knew the way, and that a swallow over the water meant a man would find his road home. 'They go back to the same nail every spring,' he said. 'Same as us, if we're daft enough.'

Joan crouched and worked the rope loose from the arm. Under the tar, scratched deep into the iron, were their father's initials and a date from the year he went down with the coaster Mary Hale. She had thought the rope was only rot. Eli had thought it was a mooring knot, and that a man should never leave a knot he had tied in the hands of strangers. They had argued about it for a decade and never once come back to check.

She stood, pulled the marline from under her arm and tied the parcel to the rail. Out in the murk two swallows came low over the chain, wings sharp against the lamp, then they turned and lifted into the fog together, and Eli laughed quietly and started up the steps ahead of her.