Black and grey tattoo of a three-masted sailing ship on the upper arm, with a small cross on the hand, in a shaded realistic style.

Sailing ship on upper arm

Realism · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A close crop of a person's arm in a dark top, showing a detailed black and grey sailing ship tattooed on the upper arm with its sails and rigging drawn in fine lines and soft shading. A small cross is visible on the hand, and a wristwatch with a black strap is worn on the other wrist. The warm lighting and shallow focus keep attention on the ship.

Realism Upper arm Hand Ship Sailing ship Sail Cross

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Wat Harrow had cooked on the Resolute for nineteen years, and in all that time he never once let the galley fire go out at night. The captain called it foolishness and the men called it Harrow's lamp, and they teased him for it until the winter off the Cape, when the wind took the foremast and the sea came over the rail like a cart of wet slate.

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Eleven men went over that night. Harrow stayed below with the coppers and the ship's boy, Tom Elsey, who was nine and cried into the bread dough. Harrow kept the fire going on salt pork fat and old rope, and every hour he climbed the ladder to the hatch and looked up at the rigging, where the topsails hung in ribbons like washing on a line. He counted the ropes he could see. He knew every one by name, having tarred half of them himself.

Near dawn the wind dropped to a sigh and the sky went the colour of pewter. Harrow was stirring a pot of burgoo when a sailor came down the ladder with rain running off his face. Cook, she's holding. Mainmast's standing. Harrow set down the spoon. Tom asked why he had kept the fire so hot all night when nobody could eat in that sea. Harrow said he had only wanted the ship to know where her kitchen was.

When the Resolute was broken up at Chatham, Harrow kept one piece of her, a rail-cap with a scorch mark on it. The men who drank with him said he still set a lamp in his front window each night, facing the water. He told them it was only for the ships that came home late.