Black and white line drawing flash sheet showing a lighthouse, a sailing ship, a compass rose, an anchor, two birds and a floral swirl, with no body placement shown.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Nautical flash sheet with lighthouse and anchor

Black and grey · Flash

A flash sheet of separate nautical designs on a white background. The main panel shows a tall lighthouse beside a sailing ship at sea, with a curling floral vine on the left, while smaller designs below include a compass rose, an anchor, two gulls and a bird in flight. The linework is fine and uses hatching and stippling for shading, and the whole sheet is rendered in black ink only.

Lighthouse Sailing ship Compass rose Anchor Bird Flourish Vine Sea Cloud Sun Wave

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mae Tennant had the tiller of the barge Patience in both hands when the fog came down over the mouth of the estuary, thick as wet wool, and she could not see the bow. Her father had lain sick below since Lammas, and the cargo of Welsh slate sat low in the hold, worth more than the boat and the mule together. Her brother, Dai, stood at the bow with the sounding pole, calling the depths in a voice that cracked on every second word.

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"Four fathom. Three and a half."

Mae had heard the old stories at the Anchor in Runcorn, where the bargemen told them over ale: how the lighthouse at Point Ruin had once been kept by a man who would not leave his post when the river flooded, and how on still nights, if you listened, you could hear his bell ringing across the water. Nobody believed it. Mae had stopped being sure what she believed around the time her mother went into the ground.

Then, through the grey, a pale shape rose. The lamp at the top of the tower burned yellow and steady, and beneath it the rocks showed white where the spray broke. Mae steered by it, keeping the light always a hand's width off the larboard bow until the water deepened and the bank fell away behind them.

When they moored at dawn below the hill, the fog had lifted from the sea. Dai climbed up to the tower with a loaf and a jar of honey, as their mother always had for the keeper, and left them on the step. Nobody answered his knock, but the lamp was out, and the bell beside the door had been polished bright.