Black and grey blackwork tattoo of a sailing ship at sea inside a moon shape, with birds and stars above, on a lower leg.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Sailing ship in a moon on a lower leg

Blackwork · Calf · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows a sailing ship on calm water inside a circular moon-like frame, with silhouetted birds and small stars in the sky above. The linework is bold, with solid black areas for the sky and sails and fine grey shading on the water and moon surface. Dark ink drips from the base of the circle, and the design is shown in black and grey only against red upholstery.

Blackwork Calf Ship Sea Moon Bird Star Drip

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The keep at Scarrow had lost its roof to the winter gales, so Tam and I went up to the top of the east wall with a bottle of cider and sat where the sky could see us. The moon was low over the bay that night, fat and grey as a pearl, and the sea below it lay so still it looked poured. We were arguing about whether a thing could be too beautiful to trust.

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Then Tam stopped mid-sentence and pointed. A ship sat in the moon's face, three masts black against the white, her sails hung slack. Birds crossed above her in a loose vee, and I counted six stars over the topmast before I stopped counting. Nothing had come into Scarrow harbour since the packet boat went down in 1791, and the harbourmaster's book said so in his own cramped hand.

We went down the broken stair without a lamp, which was foolish, and took the coble out from the slip. The water was so calm the oars made no sound. When we came alongside, ink ran from the hull in long threads and dripped into the sea without a ripple, and the deck was empty except for a lantern burning with no one to tend it.

Tam wanted to climb aboard. I wanted to go home. We did neither. We simply sat in the coble and watched the moon slide off the water, one slow inch at a time, until the ship was just a ship again, dark on dark. When I checked the harbourmaster's book at dawn, there was a new line at the bottom in a hand that was not his: Returned, with the tide.