Black and grey compass rose tattoo with N, E, S and W lettering on the inner forearm, in a traditional style with shaded points.

Compass rose tattoo on a forearm

Traditional · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows a compass rose inside a circle, with an eight-pointed star at the centre and the letters N, E, S and W marking the cardinal points. The linework is bold and the points are filled with black and grey shading that gives them depth. The design fills the centre of the frame against a plain skin tone, with a loose cream top and a floral fabric visible at the edges.

Traditional Geometric Forearm Compass Compass rose Star Cardinal points North East South West

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Now sit still, you, and mind the kettle, because I am not telling this twice and the wireless is already warning us about fog. My father kept the chandlery on Quay Street in Porthellis the summer the surveyor came up from Plymouth with his brass instruments and his brown leather case. He wanted a true bearing on the breakwater, and he stood on the bottom step all morning squinting through his sight while the gulls laughed at him.

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The surveyor had a habit I still remember. Before he would pack up, he drew a compass rose on the back of every chart he was given, eight points sharp as fishhooks, with the letters N, E, S and W set just outside the ring like sentries at a gate. He said a rose was only honest if you could shade it, so he worked each point in grey pencil, one side dark and the other pale, so you knew which way the light fell. My father thought him a fool for spending good lead on a thing you could read by the church clock.

Then the Mary Ann Trehearne went missing off the Lizard, and the only chart aboard was one of the surveyor's. Nobody in Porthellis would say aloud what they feared, so they sent for him. He traced his finger from the harbour mouth out past the rocks, and where it stopped there was a small pencilled star that no one had noticed before. We found her three days later, drifting, her sails furled and her crew sleeping off the worst of it in the bilge.

When the boat came in at dusk, the surveyor was already packing his case. He would not take payment. He left a rose on the back of my father's order book, the dark points turned toward the door, and said the sea always knows which way to light. I still keep that page in the drawer with the tide tables, though I have never once needed it to find my way home.