Traditional style tattoo of a three-masted sailing ship on rough green waves with a red flower below, on a lower leg.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Galleon and flower on a lower leg

Traditional · Calf · Colour · Photo

A three-masted sailing ship with green-grey sails and a dark hull trimmed in yellow sits on rolling waves, with a cloud of smoke or cloud behind it and birds in the sky. A red and white flower with a dark centre and green leaves sits at the base of the design. The linework is bold and black, with solid fills and shaded sails, and the palette is mostly greens, reds, yellows and black. The design runs vertically up the calf, with a blurred indoor floor in the background.

Traditional Calf Ship Sailing ship Wave Sea Cloud Bird Flower Sail

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The hall smelled of floor polish and the same tea urn that had boiled for every Speech Day since 1974, and Marion had been standing in front of the glass case for ten minutes before anyone thought to ask whether she wanted a squash. Inside, on a bed of faded blue baize, sat the galleon Terry Boddington had built in Form 3B from balsa, cocktail sticks and a tin of Humbrol that had made the whole classroom reek of tar. Its sails were the grey-green of old pond water, and someone had painted a cloud of smoke behind the rigging that looked more like a row of cabbages. The little card beneath read Presented by Form 3B, Easter 1981, and nothing else, because nobody had known what else to say.

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Pauline came over with a stack of name badges and a biro that had lost its nerve. She was already talking about the coach to Skegness and whether the Co-op still did the good sausage rolls before she noticed where Marion was looking. "They never found the trawler," she said quietly. "Just the net buoy off Flamborough. Mum sent a card to his mother every Christmas until she died." She pressed a badge into Marion's hand, and Marion stared at the blank space where her name should go.

The brass key was still hanging on its hook behind the caretaker's door, where it had always been. Marion let herself into the case, the glass cold on her knuckles, and turned the galleon so its bows pointed at the double doors instead of the stage. A small chip came away from the wooden hull and landed in her palm, bright yellow, the paint from the one bit of gilt Terry had been allowed to add. She wrote Marion on the badge, then, after a long moment, a second name underneath, and pinned it to the baize beside the ship.