Two feet show matching black ink tattoos on the ankles, a ship's wheel with the script 'be the one to guide me' and an anchor with 'but never hold me down'.

Matching ship's wheel and anchor ankle tattoos

Lettering · Ankle · Black and grey · Photo

A close view of two bare feet, each with a black ink tattoo on the ankle, forming a matching pair. The left ankle has a ship's wheel surrounded by handwritten script reading 'be the one to guide me...', and the right has an anchor with script reading 'but never hold me down' curving around it. The linework is bold and even, the lettering is in black with no colour, and the photo is taken at an angle showing both ankles with pink toenail polish visible on the left foot.

Lettering Ankle Ship's wheel Anchor Script Quote Matching tattoo Feet

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mind the step, it's slick with the night's tide, and you'll not want to go in twice before the bread's out. Right, so the Pascoe sisters ran the ferry Gannet across to the far bank, and everyone on this quay had an opinion on who did what. Ruth had the wheel from the day she could reach the spokes. Mags had the anchor, which was the heavy, filthy work, dropping iron into the harbour mouth and hauling it back up with her palms split open. Their father had painted a rule on the wheelhouse door in red lead, and it said the one at the helm must guide, and the one at the rail must never be held down by anything, not even her own sister's fear.

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The March gale came in off the Skerries with no warning at all, the kind that turns the sky the colour of a gutted fish. Gannet was halfway out when the engine coughed and quit. Ruth hauled the wheel hard over and shouted for the anchor, and Mags was already at the rail with the chain running through her hands like a live thing. The iron bit, the chain sang, and the boat swung round and stopped a cable's length from the rocks. I saw it from the bakery door with flour to my elbows. Nobody on that quay breathed until the lamps on the boat came steady again.

By morning Mags was down at the slipway, mending the flukes with a file and a face like thunder. Ruth asked her why she was going out again so soon. Mags said the sea had had its turn and she wasn't about to let it have the last word. Ruth just laughed and went below to fetch the flask.

So that's the Pascoe girls. Look over there, see the baker's lamp? That's the first batch coming out, and the two of them are sat on the bollards eating it hot, one with her hand on the wheel of her rope coil and the other with her boots on the anchor.