Black ink finger tattoos on a clenched fist showing a flower, a sailing ship, a ship's wheel, a palm tree and crossed arrows, in a traditional nautical style.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Nautical finger tattoos on a fist

Traditional · Hand · Black and grey · Photo

A clenched fist is shown from the front with a small black tattoo on each finger. From left to right the motifs are a flower, a sailing ship on waves, a ship's wheel, a palm tree and crossed arrows. The linework is solid and simple with no shading, and the designs are spaced evenly across the knuckles against a dark shirt and blurred background.

Traditional Hand Flower Sailing ship Ship's wheel Palm tree Arrow Finger tattoo Nautical

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The boat didn't come on Tuesday, so I've taken to sitting on the harbour wall with your last letter and the pencil map you drew on the back of it. Five little pictures in a row, the way you'd draw them for a child who can't read yet. Rose, ship, wheel, palm, arrows. Mam always said you were a lad who needed things labelled.

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Mrs Pardoe at the shop has stopped asking after you, which I suppose is her way of being kind. The palm by the lighthouse is still leaning the way it did the summer you went, and the boys have tied a rag to its top so the wind can't take it. I walk past it twice a day. Nobody has told me what the arrows meant, and I haven't asked.

Yesterday old Ned Carrick came up from the slipway with a brass wheel under his arm. It came off the Maud Lowry when she broke on the Skerry in March, and he's kept it in his shed like a relic. He said it still turns if you hold the spokes just so. I didn't tell him I'd tried, though I did, twice, with my palms flat on the cold metal, pretending it was your hands on the other side.

I think the map was a promise, Eddie. Each thing you drew was a place we'd go once you were home. The rose for the garden you'd dig, the ship for the crossing, the wheel for steering us back here. I've put the wheel's little brass cousin in my apron pocket, and when the next boat comes round the point I'll be on the wall with it, waiting to see whether you're the one who brings her in.