Black and grey ornamental anchor tattoo with a pearl chain and dotted lines on the side of the ribs, with a second filigree tattoo on the upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Ornate anchor with pearl chain on ribs

Blackwork · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A large anchor with filigree and floral patterns sits on the side of the torso, with a chain of shaded beads looping around it and dotted lines trailing from the chain. A second tattoo of a similar ornate design, with flowers and scrollwork, is visible on the upper arm at the top left. The work is entirely in black and grey, with fine shading that gives the beads and scrolls a raised, three-dimensional look.

Blackwork Dotwork Ribs Upper arm Anchor Pearl Bead Filigree Flower Scrollwork Dotted line

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mercy Hollins had counted the beads twice before the ship cleared the Lizard, and twice more in the dark of the lower hold, where the lamp swung and the pearls, sewn into the lining of her sea chest, made no sound at all. Forty-one of them. Her father had sold the rest to pay the Cadiz agent, and what remained was the chain he had strung for her mother on their wedding morning, paper-thin silver wound around the stones like rope around a capstan.

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Her cousin Joseph had the ship's carpentry and a steady hand for ink. He had drawn the anchor on the back of a chart, filigreed like a church gate, its flukes curling into leaves, and promised her the gate would open on the other side of the Atlantic. The dotted line he traced from the chain was the course they had plotted, he said, though in truth it was only the wake they left behind, and she could not look at it for long.

A storm off the Azores took the foremast and two men. Mercy stitched sailcloth in the galley with the ship lurching under her and thought about the anchor's weight, how it held a vessel still in water it could not see. On the eighth day the sky broke open, pale and thin. Joseph came down with his hands raw and said the captain had sworn the wind would hold.

That night she unpicked the lining and laid the pearls out on the table, one by one, in a loop that matched the drawing. They were not enough to buy a house. They were enough to be counted, and she was finished with counting, so she closed her fist around them and let the rest of the voyage carry her.