Black line drawing of a distressed compass rose with N, E, S and W letters, shown as a tattoo design on a plain white background.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Compass rose design in black ink

Black and grey · Flash

A compass rose with a central star and a ring, with the letters N, E, S and W set at the points. The lines are bold with stippled and speckled textures across the star points and inner ring. The design is shown in solid black on a white background, with the motif centred and filling most of the frame.

Compass Compass rose Nautical North South East West 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 nearer the stove, you, and mind the dog. Right, where was I? Ah, the compass. Your great-grandfather Abel never went further than Thirsk market in his life, but he had a brass compass he'd carried off a Hull trawler the winter the ice came down the Humber, and he swore by it. N, E, S and W stamped round the rim, the needle gone soft from the damp.

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That was the winter of the big snow. The lane to the top field vanished under drift, and the ewes were still up there. Abel took the lantern and the compass and walked out at four in the afternoon, when the light goes like a dropped coin. He couldn't see the hedge, couldn't see his own boots. So he set the needle, turned his back to the wind and counted his paces: south by the star he couldn't see, east where the sheep bell should have been, though that bell had rusted silent years before.

He found the flock by the broken gatepost, every ewe pressed into its lee, breathing out one warm cloud between them. Eleven came down off that hill behind him. The twelfth he carried on his shoulders, which is how a farmer's back gets bent.

And the compass? He lost it in the drift on the way home and never saw it again. Come spring, the thaw turned up a brass rim in the mud by that gatepost, the needle still wobbling, uncertain of north, as if the whole field had turned round while he slept. Now, who wants the last of the mince pies?