Pencil sketch of a compass rose design on paper, with an anchor forming the south point, suited to a black and grey tattoo.

Hand-drawn compass rose with anchor

Black and grey · Flash

A hand-drawn compass rose with arrowed points labelled N, E, S and W, drawn in dark pencil or ink on a pale paper background. The south point is replaced by an anchor with a curved stock and flukes, and the lines are loose and sketchy with some hatched arrowheads. The design is centred in the frame with plenty of empty paper around it, and it is shown in black and grey only.

Compass Compass rose Anchor North South East West Arrow

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The band at the Marine Ballroom had reached the second chorus of Moonlight Bay when Ray Pascoe fished a stub of pencil from his breast pocket and began drawing on the back of my dance card. I told him it was the only card I had left. He said that suited him, because a compass needed a clean sheet.

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He drew the cross the way his father had taught him on the Hull trawlers, four long arms with arrowheads at the ends, and he lettered the points with the care of a man who had only ever filled in ship's logs. North ran up towards the chandelier, east towards the bar, west towards the fire exit. At the bottom he pressed so hard the lead snapped, then gave south an anchor, two curved flukes like a pair of raised eyebrows.

"Which way's home, then?" I asked, because the saxophone had gone quiet and I wanted to hear him answer.

"Depends where you're standing," he said. "Every bearing's taken from the port you're leaving." He folded the card along the anchor line and slid it into my glove. On Saturday his ship went out past the pier lights with the bell ringing in the tide, and I stood at the railings until I couldn't tell the boat from the gulls. The card is still in my handbag, soft as cloth now. Most mornings I stand at the kitchen window, facing the sea, and I hold it up against the glass to find the anchor, the one point on it that never moves.