Traditional flash drawing of a sailing ship inside a rope-edged star with an anchor behind it, shown on a stained paper background.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Nautical star with anchor and sailing ship

Traditional · Colour · Flash

A traditional-style design of a three-masted sailing ship set within a five-pointed star outlined with dotted gold borders and rope. Behind the star sits a dark anchor with red fluked tips, and a rope runs around the anchor's shank. The ship is filled with grey and white sails against a teal, green and yellow sea and sky, with bold black outlines and a warm, stained paper background.

Traditional Star Anchor Sailing ship Rope Sea Bird Nautical

Find an artist for this

Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The biscuit had come out of the oven too pale again, and Nell Tremayne was still picking at the edges with a thumbnail when the bell over the door gave its one sharp ring. It was not yet four. Only the fishermen came in this early, and they wanted bloater paste and tea in tin mugs, not a lecture on wheat.

Keep reading

The man at the counter wore his cap pulled low and held a folded order in a hand split across the knuckles. 'Captain Harrow's compliments,' he said. 'Twelve dozen for the Dolphin Rose, tide at six.' Nell had baked for that ship's crews since her father sailed on her, and nobody had asked her for a dozen in years. She counted the biscuits into tins, lining each with greaseproof paper the way her father had shown her, and the sailor watched her hands the whole time.

She pressed the last tray with the old star cutter, the brass one with notched points and a ring of dots around its edge that left a pattern on every biscuit like rivets. 'He liked them stamped,' she said. 'So the men could tell his from the rest in the hold.' The sailor took the tins two at a time out to the cart. At the door he turned and touched his cap, and through the window Nell saw the first grey light on the water, gulls lifting off the breakwater, and the three masts of the Rose sliding out past the harbour wall.

She wiped the cutter clean and set it on the sill to dry. The lamplight caught the brass and held it there a moment, the way a thing does when it has been kept for a reason.