Full back tattoo in traditional style showing a swooping eagle above red roses, a sailing ship on waves and a red sun, with colour ink throughout.

Eagle, roses and sailing ship back piece

Traditional · Back · Mixed · Photo

A large full-back tattoo shows an orange and blue eagle with spread wings above a red sun, flanked by red roses with green leaves and buds. Below, a black and grey sailing ship with billowing sails sits among white outlined clouds, above a band of blue and white waves. Bold black outlines and flat colour fills dominate, with the ship shaded in greys and the eagle and roses in bright colour.

Traditional Back Eagle Rose Sailing ship Cloud Sun Wave Bud Sea creature

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit yourselves down and keep your hands off that rope, the tide's on the turn and I've only breath enough for one telling. The Mary Ellen Lusk came into Shields harbour in the February of 1887 with every sail still set and not a soul aboard willing to say how many had gone over the side on the crossing. Her master was Eli Varnham, a quiet man with a red rose inked on each forearm, a gift from a girl in Baltimore who had promised him a farm and sent him a letter instead.

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Varnham swore an eagle had come down out of the murk the night of the blow, screaming at the clouds, and perched on the bowsprit until dawn. The sun came up behind it like a coal in a grate, red and furious, and the bosun saw it too, and after that the crew stopped doubting the captain about anything. They say the bird's wings were gold where the lamplight caught them and blue where the spray hit, and that it kept its claws curled round the bowsprit as if the ship were its own nest.

On the last night out a grey creature rose beside the hull, a long-snouted thing with eyes like brass buttons, and it looked at Varnham as if it had read every debt he owed. He stood at the rail with his sleeves rolled and said nothing at all. When the ship docked he walked ashore without his sea chest, and the next morning the girl's letter was found pinned to the wheel. Beneath her curling hand, in his square writing, he had set down a single word, which was home.

So if you're ever out past the breakwater and the water goes glassy and blue, watch the horizon for a red sun and a bird that won't leave the bowsprit. That's Varnham, still steering for a door he never reached, and the roses are for a girl who promised more than the sea could give.