Black and grey realism tattoo covering a man's back with a sailing ship on rough waves, a bearded face in the sea spray, an underwater scene and a temple, with tentacles on the upper arms.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Full back sailing ship and sea scene tattoo

Realism · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A large back piece shows a three-masted sailing ship on choppy water beside a bearded face formed by waves and spray at upper right. The lower half shows an underwater scene with tentacles, coral, fish, rising bubbles and a sunbeam reaching down to a Greek-style temple with columns. The work uses soft grey shading and fine detail throughout, with the sleeves continuing the sea theme in octopus-like tentacles.

Realism Back Upper arm Ship Sailing ship Wave Sea Face Octopus Tentacle Column Coral Fish Bubble Cloud Underwater

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Hold the lantern higher, Nell, because the old fool at the tiller never once looked where he was going. Forty years on the Caddow run and he still swore the sea had a face. Grey as a fish's belly, bearded with spume, and it watched the Marigold the whole three days she limped home from Smyrna with her topmasts gone.

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Captain Hobb sent the cook up to the crow's nest to swear there was nothing up there but gulls. The cook came down white as a sheet and said the face had opened its mouth and the sea went quiet, the way a church goes quiet when the bell stops. Then the water under the keel turned to glass, and through the glass we could see down, down, to a drowned town with a temple on a shelf of rock, its columns standing upright in the dark, and a long shaft of light falling on it like a finger pointing.

Octopus arms came up for the rudder. Hobb cut one loose with the carving knife he used on Sundays. It was warm, and it let go of the wood slowly, the way a man lets go of a rope he has decided to keep. Fish rose round us in silver coins. Every bubble that came up carried a name, and the men swore they heard their mothers calling out of them.

We made port with four hands fewer and a hold full of sponges nobody wanted. Hobb never sailed again. He took a room above the chandler's on Quay Street and sat by the window every evening, looking out at the harbour mouth where the water lies flat as a sheet. Ask him what he wants and he says only that the face is waiting for someone to hold the lamp steady. I think he means himself.