Black and grey traditional compass rose with a rope-wrapped anchor on a shoulder and upper arm, with a small blue accent in the compass centre.

Compass and anchor on shoulder and upper arm

Traditional · Shoulder · Mixed · Photo

Two photographs of the same tattoo from different angles show a compass rose at the centre, with a rope-wrapped anchor and rope border curling around it. The linework is bold and the rope and anchor are shaded in soft grey tones, with a light blue highlight in the compass star. The design fills the shoulder and upper arm, shown against a white vest and a black chair.

Traditional Shoulder Upper arm Compass Anchor Rope Compass rose Nautical

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The bread was going green at the edges again, and Len Pardoe had nobody to blame but the damp. He scraped the mould into the slop bucket with the flat of a knife while the coaster rolled under him, one hand braced on the rail above the range. Up on the bridge the steering compass had cracked in the squall off Spurn, the card swimming in its bowl, and the mate had sent word down for anyone who could read a chart without a bell.

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Len could read a chart. He had read them for nine years before the galley took him, and he still kept his old dividers in his apron pocket. He took them out, pressed one point to the painted rose on the bulkhead, the eight-pointed star the Greek steward had put up before the war, and walked the other leg along the wall to the coil of spare hawser by the door. The old manila had gone stiff with salt. He picked a loose end free, rubbed it between his palms until it softened, and began to work the strands back into the knots his father had taught him at Grimsby, the anchor bend and the rope border looping round it in fat, careful turns.

The mate came down at four bells with his cap in his fist and found the cook on his knees, tying a length of rope into a ring on the galley floor. He asked what the devil Len thought he was doing. Len told him the ship was still pointing somewhere, and that the bulkhead had been right about it every day since 1946. The mate looked at the painted star for a long time, then at the rope, then at the lamp swinging overhead.

By morning the coaster had turned for the Humber on a bearing that matched the star to the degree, and Len was asleep on the flour sacks with the dividers still in his hand.