Traditional style tattoo of a sailing ship, eagle and skull on a thigh, framed by red clouds and lightning bolts above teal waves.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Sailing ship, eagle and skull on a thigh

Traditional · Thigh · Colour · Photo

A full-sheet sailing ship with grey and red sails sits above teal waves, with an eagle with spread wings and a skull below it. Bold black outlines, lightning bolts and red and purple clouds frame the design against the thigh. Colour ink dominates, with grey shading on the sails and skull.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom,

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The clerk at the Dover customs shed has kept your papers under his blotter since Tuesday and will not say why. I have walked the quay every morning with a flask of tea and a pencil, counting the Second Mercy's sails where they hang above the rooftops in the harbour mist, grey and banded with red like the old flags Grandfather kept in his trunk. Mrs Pryce at the chandlery says the officers are nervous about the manifest, which lists lamp oil and nothing else.

On Thursday the wind swung south-west and the sea turned the colour of a bruised plum. Lightning walked along the cliffs in jagged strokes, and I thought of the painted bolts on the stern board that you made Father's carpenter copy three times until they zigzagged the way you wanted. The eagle on the bowsprit took the rain full in its face and looked furious about it. Nobody on the quay looked up at the sky except me.

This morning the clerk came out himself, wiping his spectacles on his waistcoat, and handed me a folded paper without a word. Cleared to sail on the evening tide, it said, under a stamp so smudged I nearly missed the signature. In the margin he had written Tell your brother the skull stays aboard, which I do not understand and which you will.

Come home by Michaelmas or I shall come out there myself and bring the eagle with me.

Your loving sister, Nell

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