Traditional style colour tattoo of a sailing ship on green waves inside a waffle cone, with pink and orange flowers and green leaves below, on a lower back.

Sailing ship in an ice cream cone with flowers

Traditional · Back · Colour · Photo

A sailing ship with grey-shaded sails and a red flag rises from teal waves that spill over the top of a brown waffle cone. Bold black outlines define the ship, waves and cone, and the cone is filled with a diamond lattice pattern. Two pink and two orange flowers with green leaves sit beneath the cone, and partial lettering appears at the left and right edges of the frame.

Traditional Back Sailing ship Ship Wave Flower Leaves Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom,

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The Marigold came into the harbour this morning with her sails patched in grey sacking and a red flag at the masthead that nobody on the quay could name. You would have laughed. Mr Pellow from the bakery was out before dawn, rolling waffle cones on the bench by his oven, and he swore the captain had ordered two hundred of them in advance and paid in pennies from a tin.

Half the town walked down to see her tie up. The captain, a short man with a sunburnt neck, climbed onto a bollard and asked for the woman who sells ices from the green kiosk. That is me, as you know. He said his crew had been eating nothing but sea biscuit since March and wanted to make a gift of their last sugar. Then he tipped the crate, and the cones went rolling down the slipway, and the teal water of the harbour rose in a crest and swallowed them, lattice and all, as neat as if the sea had been waiting for a dessert.

I have not told Mr Pellow that his cones are now at the bottom of the harbour, or that I bought one with my last coin. It tasted of salt and vanilla and something like tar. The gulls are still squabbling over the flowers Mrs Greaves threw in after them, pink and orange, which seemed the right thing to do.

Write soon. The Marigold sails on the evening tide, and I have a feeling she will be back.

Love, Nell