Traditional flash drawing of a pin-up woman in a red outfit seated in a martini glass above a skull and crossbones, with the words Sailor Beware and musical notes.

Pin-up in a martini glass over a skull

Traditional · Colour · Flash

A traditional style flash design shows a pin-up woman with dark hair and red shoes, reclining in a martini glass with one leg raised. Musical notes, bubbles and the words SAILOR BEWARE sit above her, and a skull with crossbones forms the base. Bold black outlines are filled with red, yellow, cream and green on a plain tan background.

Traditional Pin-up Skull Crossbones Music note Bubble Lettering Woman

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell,

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We lay three weeks off the Horn waiting on a wind that never came, and I keep thinking about the night we went ashore at Valparaíso and found the Bell and Bottle. You will laugh, it is nothing grand, just a room of spilt rum and a piano with two keys that stick. But over the bar hung a painted board of a girl perched on the rim of a great glass, her red shoes kicking, and under her in black letters the words SAILOR BEWARE. The landlord, a man called Ortiz with one ear, said the board was older than him and his father had bought it off a Yankee who had it off a tattooist in Norfolk.

Dora sang that night. She was not the girl on the board, though she had the same red shoes and the same way of lifting her arm as if the song were a bird she meant to let go. She sang about a sailor who let the tide take his wages and his name. The men went quiet. Even Jabez, who has never been quiet in his life, sat with his mouth open.

Afterwards she sat with me on the step and asked where we were bound. I told her London by way of nothing much. She said that was the trouble with ships, you could never be sure you were going where the chart said. Then she put her shoe against my boot, and I thought at first she was joking.

We sail on Thursday. Mr Cole has nailed a board above the galley hatch with a skull and crossbones, which I suppose is his idea of humour. I am writing this so that when you read it you will know I kept my wages and my name, and that somewhere I still owe a girl in red shoes a song.

Your loving brother, Tom