Black ink compass rose with an anchor below it, Traditional style, on the upper arm of a person wearing a denim jacket.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Compass rose and anchor on upper arm

Traditional · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A black ink compass rose with an eight-point star and a decorative inner pattern sits above an anchor on the outer upper arm. The linework is bold and the compass is filled with solid black and grey shading. The image is a close crop of the arm with a blue denim sleeve pulled back at the top left and a pale green wall behind.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Put your coin in the hat and stop shaking the water off your coat. The rain has been here since the fish came in and it will still be here when I finish. This is the one about Ada Merrow and the brass compass that would only point at the harbour wall.

Keep reading

She was a rope-maker's daughter in Tallow Quay, and every morning she walked the length of the wet cobbles with that compass cupped in her palm, watching the needle shiver and settle on the same grey stones. Her father had sailed out on the Wren with a rose painted on the lid of the box and an anchor he swore would hold any storm God sent. The Wren came home without him. The compass came home in her apron pocket, still pointing.

So one wet Thursday she went down to the stalls where the old sailors sell knots and charts, and she asked a one-legged chart seller named Oss where a needle points when the man it belongs to is lost. Oss laughed until the gulls scattered. Then he took her hand, turned it over, and traced the star on the lid with his thumb. 'It points where he set his heart down,' he said. 'Go and find the anchor, girl, not the man.'

She found it that night under the fishmonger's crates, rusted through and tangled in a net. When she lifted it, the needle swung round, stopped sharp as a blade, and pointed straight at her.

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