Black silhouette design of a pirate skull wearing a tricorn hat with a crossbones emblem, an eye patch and a bandana, drawn as a stencil-style flash design.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Pirate skull stencil with crossbones

Black and grey · Flash

A bold black silhouette of a grinning skull wearing a tricorn hat decorated with a small skull and crossbones, an eye patch over one eye and a knotted bandana beneath the jaw. The design uses solid black shapes with white negative space for the bones, teeth and eye patch strap, with no shading or gradients. It is set on a plain white background, with the hat and bandana extending outward to form a compact, centred composition.

Pirate Skull Crossbones Bandana

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Ada,

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The tide took the second boat last night, so forgive the smudged ink. I'm writing by the lamp with the oil can at my elbow and the glass still ticking as it warms. Mr Coyle came across from Skerry Point at dusk with a sack of coal and a yarn about a black sail seen off the reef, a hat with horns on it and a little skull riding above the brim. I told him the sea does enough to a man's nerves without painted pirates joining in.

At four bells there was a knock on the gallery door. A man stood on the iron rail with a strip of oilcloth over one eye and a red knot at his throat, grinning as if he'd been expected. Below the rocks a rowing gig knocked against the stone with nobody at the oars. He asked whether the light still turned, and I said it had turned every night since 1871 and would turn tonight whether he approved or not. He laughed the way gulls do, all at once, then asked me to keep his name out of the logbook.

He stayed until the first grey came up over the water, mending the shutter on the north window with my own tools and telling me about a cove where the cliffs open like a mouth. When he left he put a tin of tobacco on the table and a chart with a cross marked on a rock I've never once seen at low tide.

I went down at dawn and found the rock. Scratched into its face, fresh as yesterday, is a grinning skull with one eye stopped by a patch and two bones crossed beneath it. I'm keeping the tobacco. I'll write again when the boat's back.

Love, Tom