Coloured pencil drawing of a sailing ship on waves inside a rope-framed spade shape, with a rope knot and lotus-like shape below, in a traditional style.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Sailing ship in a rope-framed heart design

Traditional · Mixed · Flash

A three-masted sailing ship with full sails rides rolling waves inside a rope border shaped like a spade. A rope knot and a lotus-like form sit at the base of the design. The drawing is rendered in blue and red coloured pencil with hatched shading, and the background is plain pale paper.

Traditional Ship Sailing ship Wave Rope Knot Lotus Spade

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell, the Marigold went down the Medway on Tuesday without me, and I have spent three days pretending the tide is the reason my hands won't keep still. Mr Harker took her out under a new foresail that the sailmaker in Strood stitched in the wrong blue, so she looks like a bruise against the sky. Nobody has had the heart to say so to his face.

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You will remember the knot I tied on the rope border the night before she was launched, the one Father taught me, which holds under any strain and slips free if you pull the wrong end. I tied another on the rail beside the lotus Mrs Quayle painted, though she swears lotuses grow in mud and have no business on a collier. She may be right. I have always liked things that grow where nobody planned them to.

The yard has put me on a smaller hull now, a lighter for the Strood wharves, and the foreman calls me the Admiral because I measure everything twice and cut once. Each evening I take out the drawing I made of the Marigold in blue and red pencil, the waves rolling under her bow and the rope drawn round the whole thing like a playing card, and I add one more hatch line where the spray hits her quarter. It is nearly finished. I will bring it on Sunday.

Keep the lamp lit on the landing. I will watch for it from the last bend, the way you watch for a sail coming round the point, and if it turns out to be only the wind in the reeds, I will still wave.