Blue-ink sailing ship with billowing sails and waves tattooed on the upper back of a woman with blonde hair, above a white lace top.

Sailing ship on upper back

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A single-masted sailing ship with several full sails and small flags on its masts sits on the upper back, with wave lines beneath the hull. The linework is fine and sketch-like, with light hatched shading on the sails and hull. The design is rendered in a single blue ink and is centred on the shoulder blade area of the back.

Back Ship Sailing ship Sail Wave Flag

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The galley cook on the Vrouwe Geertruida kept a single blue plate on the shelf above the stove, and nobody aboard was allowed to eat from it. It had come from a potter in Delft the year her husband sailed, and it showed a two-masted ship with flags snapping from its tops, sails bellied full, running before a wind the potter had never felt.

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When the Geertruida lay becalmed off the Texel for nine days, the water in the casks went green and the men muttered that someone had cheated the sea. The cook said nothing. On the tenth morning she took the blue plate down, spooned the last of the oatmeal onto it, and carried it up to the rail. She set it on the wood and told the water that her husband was owed a fair wind, and the sea could have the plate in payment.

The sea took the oatmeal and left the plate. She carried it back down and washed it, then turned it over in her hands. Under the glaze someone had scratched fine lines like waves, done in a hurry by a man who did not want the wind to hear him. By noon the sails filled from the west and the Geertruida ran for home with every man alive.

The cook never ate from the plate. She kept it on the shelf, and when the boys asked why, she said the ship had only needed asking politely, and then she sent them back to the peeling.