Traditional style tattoo of a bottle over waves inside a grey shield, with red cloud and yellow lightning bolts, on a forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Bottle and lightning shield on a forearm

Traditional · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A shield-shaped badge contains a bottle lying over dark waves, with a rolled paper shape inside the neck area. Two yellow lightning bolts and a red cloud sit above, framed by a thick black outline and grey shading. Bold colour fills red, yellow and grey against a red-tinged skin background give it a flat, graphic look.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear whoever lifts this from the wet sand, the mate who wrote it last night is called Tom Hollis and he is not drunk, whatever the bosun says. The Margaret Ann took the squall off Trevose at about four bells, and the cloud over the mainmast went the colour of a bruised plum. Forked light came down twice on the foremast, and the crew stood about like wet hens, waiting for the sea to make up its mind.

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The skipper, Captain Pardoe, never believed in messages. He said a bottle was only a way for a man to feel brave while the water took him. So I borrowed the cork from the rum locker, rolled this page tight as a cigarette, and pushed it through the neck while Pardoe was below arguing with the glass. The ink is from the purser's pen, which I will answer for if I live.

The waves came over the rail in green sheets, and the lightning kept walking across the water as if it were counting us one by one. Nobody screamed. Dutch Sam sang a hymn he had learnt in Rotterdam, badly, and we all joined in because it was something to hold on to.

If you find this, the Margaret Ann is most likely lying at the bottom of the Celtic Sea, and my sister Ellen in Padstow thinks I am a fool for going back to sea. Walk up to the head and tell her the bottle came home. Tell her I chose the sea, not the other way round. Yours, Tom.

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