Colour traditional tattoo of a pirate ship with a skull and crossbones sail, red flags and green waves across an upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Pirate ship and skull on upper arm

Traditional · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

A pirate ship with a skull and crossbones on its black sail, red flags and rigging, sits above green and blue waves. The bold outlines and solid fills give it a classic, flat-shaded look. The tattoo runs down the upper arm of a woman in a white vest top, photographed in profile against a dark background.

Traditional Upper arm Skull Crossbones Sail Wave Flag

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The lamp-man at Coldharbour Halt kept a red flag folded in the drawer beneath his ticket punch, and every October he took it out and ran it up the signal post. Trains slowed for it whether the drivers liked it or not. Nobody in the village could say why, except the lamp-man, and he would only say it was owed.

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His daughter Nell asked him once, when she was nine and sharp as a tack. He sat her on the bench by the coal bunker and told her about the Mermaid's Purse, a schooner that had put in at the sidings in his grandfather's day. Her sail was black, with a grinning skull painted in the middle, and her crew came ashore wanting a train to the coast. There was no coast on that line. There was only the moor, the reservoir and the long grey drop to the mill towns.

The captain paid for three tickets with gold that turned to river stones by morning. The lamp-man's grandfather saw to the crew, one by one, and put them on the last goods train out. The captain stood on the platform with his hat in his hand, waving them off as if the sea were waiting at the far end. Then he looked up at the signal post, where the red flag stood stiff in the wind, and laughed until he coughed. He walked into the reservoir without a splash.

Nell asked what the flag was for. Her father said it was for the captain, so he would know the line was still open and that he had not been forgotten. She said that was daft, and he agreed. The next October she ran it up herself before he was out of bed, and the first train that afternoon slowed at the post without being told.