Black and grey blackwork and dotwork tattoo of a penguin in a captain's hat with a pipe and smoke clouds, with a small anchor on its side, on a forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Penguin in a captain's hat on a forearm

Blackwork · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A penguin stands upright in a captain's hat, with a pipe or cigarette and wisps of smoke curling around its head. The design is built from dense dotwork stippling and fine hatched lines, with a small anchor marked on its flank and a single curved line describing its wing. The tattoo is rendered only in black and grey ink and fills the forearm, with a worn patterned rug and framed artwork visible behind it.

Blackwork Dotwork Forearm Penguin Smoke Pipe Anchor

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Don't let the cap fool you. Captain Marisol Penhallow never once stood on the bridge of the Mirabel with dry feet, and she never came up from the galley without a clay pipe clamped in her beak. The crew swore the smoke kept the cold off. The cook swore it was the only reason the stores lasted past March.

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The trouble started off the Shetlands with a crate of tinned peaches and a deckhand called Dunstan who had counted them twice. Penhallow sat on the hatch with her wings folded and let him finish. Then she asked him, very politely, whether he had ever seen a penguin count anything in a hurry. He said no, Captain. She said that was why she kept the peaches in her own cabin, and went back to her pipe.

Three days later the glass fell like a stone. The sea came over the bow grey as slate, and the men lashed themselves to the rigging while the ice began to talk in its low, groaning way. Penhallow tied the wheel with a length of rope, tapped her pipe out on the rail, and climbed the ladder slowly, one flipper at a time. Nobody saw her face. They only heard her say, flat and calm, that the sea wanted to be looked at straight and never argued with.

When the swell finally eased and the sky went the colour of pewter, she was still at the wheel. Dunstan brought her a cup of tea. She took it, drank half, and asked him to light her pipe from the lamp. The smoke curled up around the brim of her cap like a small grey promise, and somewhere below, in the dark of her cabin, the peaches waited for morning.