Black and grey drawing of a pin-up woman in a short dress and stockings seated on an anchor marked 13 with two stars, in a traditional style.

Pin-up woman seated on an anchor

Traditional · Black and grey · Flash

A seated pin-up woman with curled hair wears a strapless top, a short full skirt and black stockings with a garter. She sits on a large anchor that has the number 13 and two black stars on its arms. The work is rendered in pencil with soft shading on the figure and clean outlines on the anchor, in black and grey only.

Traditional Pin-up Woman Anchor Star Garter Dress High heel

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The anchor had come up off the wreck of the Tern in the spring of 1951, and nobody on the quay would touch it until Mags Kettering sat down on it in her good shoes and told them all to stop being daft. The number 13 was stamped into the shank, and the two arms were chipped where the Tern had gone onto the Skerry rocks. The harbourmaster wanted it melted down for scrap. Mags ran the net loft and had a rule about things people were frightened of: sit on them until they stopped being frightening.

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Dougal Reece came down the slipway with his cap in his hands. The Brightwater was the only boat left with a berth, and she was taking the Thursday tide whether or not her crew wanted her to. Thirteen was a poor number for a hull, he said, and the men had heard it from their wives and their mothers and their own bad dreams. Mags tapped the black star on the fluke with her knuckle. Somebody had painted those by hand, and painted them carefully, she said. A thing made that carefully had been meant to get home.

They lashed the anchor to the foredeck on Wednesday night while the frost came down on the harbour wall. Nobody whistled. Dougal stood at the wheel and counted the lamps along the breakwater the way other men counted rosary beads.

By the Thursday morning the Brightwater was clear of the Skerry and the sea had gone flat as slate. The anchor stayed stowed, its arms catching the grey light, the two stars showing above the rail like small black eyes. Mags watched from the loft window until the boat was a speck, then went back to her mending.