Man in a grey t-shirt printed with an octopus and ship wheel, with traditional tattoo sleeves showing roses on both arms.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Octopus and ship wheel tee with tattoo sleeves

Traditional · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A man stands in a grey marl t-shirt printed with a black engraved-style octopus wrapped around a ship's wheel with an anchor at the centre. Both arms are covered in tattoos, including red and black roses and darker shading on the forearms and upper arms. The photo is cropped at the chin, with the subject's hands in his pockets against a dark background.

Traditional Forearm Upper arm Octopus Ship wheel Anchor Rose T-shirt Sleeve

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Thomas Pell had the ship's wheel under one arm and the crate under the other when the 6.40 pulled into Saltcombe, and the porter, Doreen Achterberg, asked him what in God's name he thought he was doing with a dead octopus on her platform. He said it wasn't dead. He said it had waited in the Sound since the Kittiwake went down, and it would not be left behind on a railway line when the sea was only a mile off.

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Doreen had worked the signal box for thirty-one years and knew better than to argue with cargo that talked back. She made him sign the label. Under Destination he wrote Harbour Wall, and under Contents, in pencil, he wrote ANCHOR, FOUR SPOKES MISSING, ONE OCTOPUS, PATIENT.

The station clock ran four minutes slow. Thomas carried the crate down the steps to the quay, where the tide was just turning and the old mooring rings had gone the colour of cinnamon. He set the wheel on the stones. The octopus unfolded one arm at a time, its suckers pale against the black paint, and laid itself over the spokes the way a man settles into a chair he has missed.

Up on the platform, the signal arm dropped with a sound like a small bell. Doreen, who had never once seen it move without a lever, watched it from the box window and said nothing at all. Out past the breakwater, something pale rose once and waved, and the wheel began, very slowly, to turn.