Black and grey fine line forearm tattoo of a compass rose, a sailing ship and an ornate cartouche with lettering, with a small globe near the wrist.

Compass rose, ship and cartouche on a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

The forearm carries a compass rose with radiating lines, a three-masted sailing ship drawn in sketchy, hatched linework, and an ornate scrolled cartouche containing engraved-style lettering. A small globe sits near the wrist and a few tiny lines of text appear near the elbow. The work is entirely black and grey, with fine, delicate lines and light shading against the skin.

Fine line Forearm Compass rose Sailing ship Lettering Globe Engraving

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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

Mind the fender, the lot of you, and keep your hands off that brass, Mrs Pargeter counts the fingerprints every morning. Now where was I? Ah yes, the chart. It hung in the back parlour when my grandfather first came to lodge here, a sheet of foxed paper with a compass rose drawn in ink, eight long spokes thrown out like the legs of a spider, and a scrolled frame round the lettering that nobody could read for the brown of the ink.

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My grandfather could read it. He said a mapmaker called Tobias Wren drew it in 1709 for a three-master named the Harrowgate, and that every ship's boy aboard knew the rose by heart, because the sailing master swore by it. Wren had hatched the sails so fine you needed a glass to count them. He had also set the north point a shade off true, a single point of the thirty-two, and nobody noticed until the Harrowgate came back into the Humber a fortnight late with her cargo spoiled and her captain swearing at the sea.

The captain's name was Edmund Lusk, and he did not blame the sea. He carried the chart to Wren's shop in Hull and laid it on the counter, and Wren looked at it a long while, then drew the rose again on a fresh sheet, correct to the last spoke. When Lusk asked why he had made the first one wrong, Wren said a chart must be trusted, and a man who trusts a flawed thing learns where his own judgement lies. Then he kept the wrong copy for himself, and that copy is the one on the wall.

So if you wake in the night and find yourself a little east of where you meant to be, don't blame the house. Check the chart. It's still pinned up in the back parlour, and it still points at the door.