Colour tattoo of a grey and blue octopus wrapped around a gold anchor decorated with gears, on the upper thigh.

Octopus and gear anchor on a thigh

Neo-trad · Thigh · Colour · Photo

A large octopus with blue-grey skin and suckered tentacles coils around a golden anchor decorated with cogs and scrollwork. The shading is smooth and painterly, with highlights on the head and tentacles and bold dark outlines defining the forms. The design fills the upper thigh against a plain skin background, with a sleeve of green fabric visible at the top left.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Ada,

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The anchor came up again this morning, and Captain Morrow swore it was the third time this month the chain had been found wound round something that was not a rock. This time it was the octopus. Its arms had gone through the cogs of the forward winch and locked there, the great grey head pressed against the brass housing as if listening to the gears. Mr Pell wanted to cut it free. The captain would not let him. He said the creature had been keeping the anchor company since Gravesend and had earned a little courtesy.

I am writing this by the lamp in the chart room because the ship is riding at anchor off Shingle Point and the wind has the rigging singing. Pell has taken to calling the beast Mister Gilt, after the gold-leaf scrollwork on the anchor stock, which the creature seems to prefer above all else. Every evening it unwinds a single tentacle, polishes the cog teeth with its suckers, and winds itself tight again. The engineers swear the winch runs sweeter for it. Dr Haskett says it is nothing but a cuttlefish's cousin with ambitions.

Last night I went up on deck with the lantern. The sea was flat and black, and Mister Gilt had lifted its head clear of the water, its eyes catching the light like two bronze buttons. It lowered one arm and laid the tip against the anchor's crown, very gently, the way you would touch a sleeping child's hand. Then the bell in the tower struck eight, the whole arm tightened, and the chain began to sing.

I do not know yet whether we will sail with it or without it. Write soon and tell me the weather in Bristol. I have stopped expecting it to be kind.

Yours, Tom

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