Black linework tattoo of a three-masted sailing ship with furled sails and flags, placed on the outer upper arm of a person with blonde hair.

Sailing ship on an upper arm

Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A detailed black tattoo of a three-masted sailing ship with full and furled sails, rigging lines and two flags at the masthead. The shading is built from fine hatched lines, giving the hull and sails an engraved, vintage appearance. The ship is shown in profile across the upper arm against plain pale skin, with a white lace top in the background.

Upper arm Ship Sailing ship Sail Rigging Flag

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You'll want to know why a sensible man sails a ship into a church hall, and I'll tell you, though my knees have opinions about standing that long. Forty years back, Walter Pinnock built a model of the Halcyon Dove from a kit his wife bought him in Weymouth, and he rigged every line himself, hatching the sails with a crow quill because he said a ship ought to look like it was drawn by someone who loved her. He never finished the flags. That was his one regret, he said, the bunting being the hardest part to make look like wind had got into it.

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His brother Owen came home from the Plymouth yards with a bottle of gin and a grievance, and the two of them argued over that model every Sunday until the varnish went yellow. Owen claimed the hull was too narrow for the masts. Walter claimed Owen had never once in his life got a sail to behave. They stopped speaking the winter the boat got sold to pay a debt neither of them would name, and the model went into a drawer with the good tablecloth.

So when Walter's granddaughter Ruth came to me last spring wanting that ship on her arm, I asked her what she wanted it to say. She said she wanted it to say that some things come back to you if you wait long enough. I told her ships don't come back, they only come into harbour, and she laughed and said that would do. Today Owen and Walter's sons have shaken hands over the cake. The Halcyon Dove is on the mantel again, flags still unfinished, and I suspect that is precisely the point.