Black and grey traditional compass rose with two curling banners reading a line about ships and harbour, tattooed on a person's lower abdomen.

Compass rose with banner quote on torso

Traditional · Other · Black and grey · Photo

A compass rose with N, E, S and W points sits at the centre, with a shaded star and radiating lines behind it. Two curled banners cross the design, carrying the lettering 'A SHIP AT HARBOR IS SAFE, BUT THAT IS NOT WHAT SHIPS ARE FOR'. The work is rendered in black and grey with bold outlines and soft shading, and it is framed centrally on bare skin with a blue sheet at the bottom edge.

Traditional Other Compass Compass rose Banner Lettering Star

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Tom, the glass has dropped again and Mrs Pryor's cat has taken to sleeping on your oilskins, which you left on the hook behind the scullery door. I have not moved them. Mother says I am being sentimental. I say the coat still smells of tar and of you, and the tar lasts longer.

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Your letter from Hull came on Tuesday. The owners want the Marigold out on the Baltic run before the ice, and you would sooner be scraped by ice than sit idle in the Humber. I read that line twice. You have never sat still, not even at Christmas when you were eight and went up the chimney stack after the wind vane. So I have stopped asking you to stay. I only ask that you come back by St Hilda's, when the herring boats are in and the wharf is loud enough to hear yourself think.

Yesterday I walked out to the end of the pier to watch the tide turn. A grey gull sat on the lamp housing and would not shift for me, and I thought, there is my brother in feathers, unwilling to be moved. I stood there until my fingers ached. Then I went home and fetched Father's old brass compass from the dresser drawer, the one with the cracked glass.

I am posting it with this. The needle still swings north if you tap the face, though I expect it will stick somewhere past Denmark. Tap it when the night watch gets long. Your loving sister, Nell.