Black and grey traditional flash sheet showing five moth designs with bold outlines and dotwork shading, taped to a brown card background.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Five moths on a flash sheet

Traditional · Black and grey · Flash

A white sheet shows five moth designs arranged in a loose grid, with wings spread and bodies shown from above. The linework is bold and dark, with the wings filled by solid black sections, bands of grey, and stippled dotwork. The sheet is taped to a brown surface, with the moths evenly spaced across the frame.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom, the lamp in the galley has gone sour with smoke and I've been sat under it since the last watch, counting the moths that come to it. There are always five of them by the dogwatch, bold as ship's officers, with their wings spread wide like they own the bulkhead. Cook says they're the souls of drowned cabin boys, which is rubbish, but I left the hatch open all night anyway, just in case.

Keep reading

The new bosun has been at me about the flour sacks again. Says I've been feeding the rats, and I told him the rats are the only crew who don't complain about the biscuit. He didn't laugh. He's from Hull and he doesn't know a joke till it's been explained twice by the mate. Still, he let me keep the spare lamp oil, so I count that a victory.

The one with the diamond on its back came in last night and sat on the rim of my tin cup for a good hour. Striped like a bosun's sleeve, dark and light, dotted all over like someone had gone at it with a pin. I thought of you, which was daft, because you never could sit still long enough to be looked at. When it finally flew I went up on deck to see where it went, and there was only the grey sea and a gull with a fish.

Write when we make Valparaiso. Tell your mother the parcel of tea arrived and I am not drinking it all at once, whatever she thinks.

Your brother, Ned

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