Full torso tattoo in neo-traditional style showing an owl with spread wings across the chest, with a compass, sailing ship and woman's portrait on the stomach.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Owl and nautical full torso piece

Neo-trad · Chest · Colour · Photo

A large owl with spread wings and talons dominates the chest, with a sailing ship, a compass rose, rope and a fleur-de-lis below it. A woman's portrait with dark wavy hair sits to the right on the stomach. Bold outlines and rich colour, including orange, teal and red, are used throughout, with shading in the feathers and the sea.

Neo-trad Traditional Chest Owl Wing Compass Sailing ship Rope Fleur-de-lis Woman Portrait Anchor Sea

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dearest Nell, the owl came aboard at Bristol in a fish crate, glaring like a magistrate, and has not forgiven any of us since. Cook says it eats more than the bosun. I say it has the only sensible face on this ship. We have been three weeks past the Azores with the glass falling and the wind backing round to the north, and the captain keeps taking sights that do not agree with one another.

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The binnacle compass was sent to the chandler's for mending, so we steer by the brass rose Mr Pell keeps in his coat, the one you pressed on him for luck. Last night the foresail rope parted with a crack like a pistol, and the owl went up the mainmast in one flurry of feathers, perched on the yard, and would not come down until I brought up a herring. I never thought I'd be grateful to a bird for anything.

The figurehead is the real reason I am writing rather than sleeping. When the carpenter finished her in Plymouth he carved her face from a sketch you made of the harbour girl at the Anchor, with the same dark hair falling in waves and the same lift to her chin. Men touch her boots for luck before they go aloft. Yesterday I saw the owl settle on her shoulder as if it had always been there, and I decided there is no sense fighting what the crew already believes.

If the glass holds we make Falmouth by the next full moon. Keep the lamp lit on the harbour wall, love, and tell Mother the anchor is holding. I will be home before the herring run, and the owl will have to learn to be civil to the gulls. Yours until the sea gives me back, Tom.