Black line drawing of a mermaid with scaled tail beside a sailing ship and a large sea creature, a tattoo design sketch with no body part shown.

Mermaid and ship sea monster design

Neo-trad · Black and grey · Flash

A black ink outline sketch on paper shows a mermaid with long flowing hair and a scaled tail, holding a banner that reads Siren's Song. Behind her is a sailing ship with rigging and small figures on deck, surrounded by wave and seaweed shapes, with a large sea monster with a wide eye and fins in the lower right. The linework is bold with fine hatching on the scales and waves, and the design is uncoloured.

Neo-trad Mermaid Ship Scale Wave Banner Seaweed

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Ruth, the lamp went out again on Tuesday, and I have never told you why, because you would only laugh and say I had been at the gin. The glass was clean and the wick was new. But the singing came up through the rock the way it does when the fog sits low, and by the time I had climbed the stairs the light had gone dark on its own.

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The Mary Ellen out of Shields came onto the Skerry that night with her topsails still set. Captain Haig hailed me afterwards. He said a woman's voice had called his name from the water, and he had gone to the rail to answer it. Only his mate's fist in his collar kept him from going over. I have seen the painted board they hang in the Ship Inn, the one that says SIREN'S SONG beneath a woman with a fish's tail. Folk here think it is a joke. Nobody laughs at it now.

Last night I went down to the lower rocks with a lantern and a tin of lamp oil, meaning to find the thing. Under the weed there was a shape the size of a cart, with one great eye open and wet, watching me the way a dog watches a door. Something moved in the water beside it, a pale hand, and a lock of hair rose up and wound itself round the lantern handle. I dropped the tin. The oil spread across the surface and caught, blue and then green, and the singing stopped as if someone had shut a door.

I have lit the lamp every night since and kept my ears stopped with wax. Tell Mam I am well. If the post boat comes Friday, send me a proper copy of the tide tables and a quarter of the good tea. Your brother, Tom.