Black fine line script running along the upper arm and forearm, with a compass rose tattoo on the ribs, shown on a woman with her arms raised.

Compass rose and script tattoos on arm and side

Fine line · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

The photo shows a woman with her arms raised, displaying several black tattoos. A long line of cursive handwriting runs from the upper arm down the forearm, with a compass rose on the side of the ribs below it, and smaller script and symbols appear on the other forearm and wrist. The linework is thin and even, the ink is solid black with no shading, and the pale background keeps the focus on the tattoos.

Fine line Lettering Upper arm Forearm Ribs Compass Compass rose Script Handwriting Quote Symbol Arrow

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The wheelhouse of the Ellen Pardew smelled of diesel and wet wool when I came up at four, and Ray Ketteridge was already bent over the chart with a pencil behind his ear, tracing a line that ran off the edge of the paper. 'Bank's closed till Thursday,' he said, without looking up. 'We go round the Dogger the long way or we go home empty.'

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I said nothing. I had my mother's brass dividers in my pocket, the ones she gave me the winter she stopped writing letters, and I kept turning them over while Ray measured. The compass rose printed in the corner of the sheet had eight points, each one ending in a fine arrowhead, and the north point had been inked over so many times that it stood out like a nail head. Beside it someone had written, in a hand I knew from the back pages of the logbook, 'keep the wind on the left and the dead man's bank on the right.' Ray had never said who the dead man was. I had never asked.

We went the long way. Three days of grey water and a swell that kept the nets full of weed and one sulking skate. On the fourth morning the haze lifted and the light came up behind the Humber like someone had lifted a lid, and there was the fleet, eleven boats strung out exactly where Ray had said they would be. He had known the bank all along. He had only wanted me to watch him decide.

I wrote our position in the log in my own hand, copying his figures, then took the dividers out and walked the distance back to the harbour mouth across the chart, one careful point at a time, the way she had taught me.