Traditional style colour tattoo of a pin-up woman in a red outfit holding an anchor rope, with a banner reading Steady as she goes, on the body.

Pin-up and anchor with banner on skin

Traditional · Other · Colour · Photo

A pin-up woman in a red outfit and dark hair holds a rope beside an anchor, with a small flower above her head. A cream banner with black lettering reads Steady as she goes and sits across the lower half of the design. Bold black outlines define the shapes, with solid red, flesh, green and grey fills and smooth shading.

Traditional Other Pin-up Woman Anchor Rope Banner Flower Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The rain had been coming sideways off the harbour since five, and by the time you reached the fish market at Grimsby the stalls were sluicing their slabs with grey water. Your uncle Dennis had told you to keep your hands in your pockets and your mouth shut, and you were managing neither. Gulls worked the cable bins. A boy in oilskins was hauling a crate of cod that looked heavier than he was.

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Dennis came down the row with two teas in paper cups and a cigarette stuck behind one ear, and handed you one without looking. "Cook on the Marigold for thirty years," he said, "and never lost a pan overboard." He nodded at the shutter of the stall opposite, faded red and green, where a painted girl in a sailor's dress held a rope beside an anchor. "Old Mae did that. Said a woman keeps a grip on the line when the sea gets awkward." You asked what became of Mae. He shrugged. "Sold up. Took her money to Skegness and never set foot on the boats again."

By noon the wind had got up and the lorry from Hull was two hours late, so you and Dennis lashed the last pallets under a tarpaulin yourselves. Hail rattled off the corrugated roof. He kept leaning into the knots and muttering the thing he always muttered when a job went wrong, which was that the sea didn't care whether you were ready. You wrapped the rope round the bollard twice, the way Mae had shown him, and felt the cart stop shuddering under your hands.

When the lorry finally came, its driver climbed down with the manifest and asked whether the place was always this grim. Dennis laughed until he coughed up his tea. "Only in season," he said, and tapped the shutter. Later, walking to the car as the rain eased to drizzle, you looked back once. The painted girl still held her rope beside the anchor, and the banner beneath her said what the week had taught you to say too: steady as she goes.