Black and grey drawing of a compass rose with N, E, S and W points and a feather hanging below, a geometric tattoo design shown without skin.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Compass rose and feather design

Geometric · Black and grey · Flash

The drawing shows an eight-pointed compass rose with a dotted outer ring and the letters N, E, S and W marking the cardinal points. A fine-line feather with shaded barbs hangs from the bottom of the compass on a plain light grey background. The shading is in black and grey, with the star points rendered in solid, contrasting ink.

Geometric Dotwork Compass Compass rose Feather Star

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit closer, the lamp's failing and I'll not waste oil on a man who won't listen. My father drew wind roses for the Hull whalers, forty years at a board under the north window. He never set a point down without first asking the sea which way it meant to go. Eight points, he'd say, and a ninth for the one you lose.

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The winter the Esperance went missing, the owners wanted a chart that would bring her home. Father sat up three nights with brass dividers and a pot of sepia ink. On the third night a grey gull blew in off the mudflats and dropped a primary feather onto his blotter, the barbs still wet with the Humber. He trimmed the quill, shaded every barb with a hair brush, and hung the feather from the south point like a plumb line.

The chart went out with the search party. They found the Esperance drifting off Spurn, her crew already ashore at Easington and none the worse for it. The owners framed the chart and never asked why a feather hung from the bottom of a compass. Father knew. A rose shows you where the land is. A feather shows you which way the wind has been blowing.

So when you ask me about the lamp, I'll tell you it was never the chart that kept us. It was his habit of checking that feather every morning, to see how the wind had combed it overnight. Turn your head now. Feel that draught under the door? That's the south-westerly, and it's coming our way.