Black and grey traditional style tattoo on an upper arm showing a classic cartoon mouse at a ship's wheel, framed by rope, a lamp and an anchor.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Cartoon mouse at ship's wheel with anchor and rope

Traditional · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A cartoon mouse in a 1920s style stands at a ship's wheel, with a lamp at the top and an anchor at the base of the design. A thick rope border frames the scene, and the background uses soft grey shading behind the figure. The bold black outlines sit against the skin on a vertical limb, with the composition centred and filling the frame.

Traditional Upper arm Ship's wheel Anchor Rope Nautical

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell, the tide was out when your letter reached me, so I read it sitting on the sea wall with my boots full of sand. You asked whether the steamer still carries that daft little mouse beside the wheel. It does. Captain Harrow would have had it scrubbed off in March if he could have reached it, but the paint has sunk into the grain now, and he says a ship that changes its face in port is bad luck.

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The mouse was the work of Eli Crane, who had a steady hand and a peculiar sense of humour. He drew it the week the wheel came back from the yard, black on grey, with ears as round as halfpennies and a grin you could hang a coat on. He whistled the same jaunty tune every time we cleared the harbour mouth, and before long the lads on the quay were whistling it back at us from the bollards, and the gulls seemed to join in.

Eli didn't come back from the Dogger run in November. The Gull came home alone three days later, her lamp still burning at the top of the wheelhouse as if nobody had told it otherwise. Nobody has had the heart to take the mouse down, and nobody has whistled that tune since, not even the captain, though I catch him looking at the painted grin when he thinks no one is watching.

Come down on Sunday and bring your good thread. The anchor on the stern has a split in its shank, and the captain says he'll pay whoever mends it. Tell your mother the lamp is kept lit at night now, same as before.