Four-panel photo of a black and grey full arm sleeve with clouds, sunburst rays, doves, a pocket watch, an anchor and a compass rose, on the upper arm and forearm.

Black and grey cloud sleeve with doves and anchor

Realism · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

The sleeve covers the upper arm and forearm with a dense cloud background, radiating light rays and several doves in flight. Smaller motifs include a pocket watch with Roman numerals and script lettering, an anchor, a compass rose, an eye within a triangle and a classical building with columns. The shading is soft and smooth in grey tones across all four photographed angles, with no colour ink.

Realism Traditional Upper arm Forearm Cloud Dove Ray Pocket watch Anchor Compass Eye Building Lettering Sleeve

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The chronometer had stopped at a quarter past four, and nobody aboard the Ardent Mary would admit to touching it. Mattie Lowe, twenty-two and the only apprentice who could read Roman numerals without moving his lips, stood over the brass case in the chart room while rain ran off the skylight in ropes. Captain Dunmore wanted a longitude by noon. Without the watch they were guessing, and guessing in the Western Approaches had sent better ships than this one onto the Scilly rocks.

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He lifted the case and tilted it toward the lamp. Behind the glass the hands were still, and caught in the balance wheel was a grey feather no longer than a fingernail. Someone had been down in the hold that morning, where the crate of racing pigeons was lashed beside the coal, and had carried a little of the cloud up with them. Mattie thought of his grandmother's windowsill in Cork, where a bird had always flown first at the steeple of the customs house before it flew anywhere else, as though the columns on the quay were the only true north it had ever been taught.

He picked the feather free with a pair of tweezers, wound the watch until his thumb ached, and felt the balance take up its small, stubborn beat. On the bridge the sun broke through in long pale rays and the captain shot it with the sextant, grumbling. When the numbers were worked, they were forty miles east of where the log said they should be, and the Scillies were a good deal further off than the men below had feared. Mattie carried the pigeon up the companionway himself and opened the basket. The bird rose, circled the mainmast twice, and then struck out north-east for the coast. It was the first honest thing anyone had told him all voyage, and it had come with a feather.