Black calligraphic lettering on white reading Improvidus, Asto, quod Victum, with the English line Improvise, Adapt, and Overcome beneath, shown as a lettering design without a body placement.

Latin motto in calligraphic script

Lettering · Black and grey · Flash

The image shows the Latin phrase Improvidus, Asto, quod Victum set in a flowing, pointed script, with a smaller serif line below reading Improvise, Adapt, and Overcome. The lettering is solid black on a plain white background, with thin hairline strokes and thicker downstrokes. The text is centred in a simple, uncluttered layout.

Lettering Latin phrase Script lettering Calligraphy

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Maud, The engine gave out at four this morning, somewhere south of the Dogger, and we've been drifting ever since with half the net still in the water and the wind backing south-west. Skipper Halloran chalked his motto on the wheelhouse board again before we left, the one from his old Latin master at the grammar school in Hull. Deacon has spent the whole day arguing that it means something different every time he reads it.

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Halloran says the master wrote it on purpose, a joke for boys who would never be asked to construe anything. Improvidus, asto, quod victum. Deacon reckons it means stand where you are unprepared and eat whatever the sea gives you, which is nearer the truth than any schoolbook. We rigged a jury sail from the spare trawl boom and a torn tarpaulin, and I used your old darning needle to stitch the reef points because the palm kept slipping. My fingers look like something the gulls have been at, but the rig holds.

Around noon the wind shifted and the Constance drifted towards the Dutch buoy, and for a while I was certain we'd end up on the wrong side of the line with nothing to show but blisters. Then Deacon got the engine's fuel pipe open with a hairpin and a length of bicycle chain, and it coughed twice before it caught. Nobody cheered. We just stood there listening to it, as if we'd been let off something.

We've shot the net again and the catch is good, better than we had any right to expect after such a night. Tell Ada I've not forgotten the hairpin is hers, and that I'll bring it back when we're in on Tuesday. Your loving brother, Tom.