Black and grey traditional tattoo of a sailing ship, rose, ship's wheel and anchor across an upper arm and shoulder.

Sailing ship, rose and anchor on upper arm

Traditional · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A large black and grey tattoo covers the upper arm and shoulder, centred on a three-masted sailing ship with full sails among waves and clouds. A rose, a ship's wheel, a rope border, a lifebuoy and an anchor surround the ship. Bold outlines, solid black shading and grey wash give the piece a classic flash look, with no colour ink used.

Traditional Upper arm Shoulder Sailing ship Rose Ship's wheel Anchor Rope Wave Cloud Sail

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The customs man at Penwick Quay wanted to know why a barque with three masts was carrying two hundredweight of lamp oil and no manifest to show for it. I told him the manifest was in my head, which was where Captain Tolland kept most things that spring, and he didn't laugh, so I knew I had three minutes before he sent for the dog.

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He walked the deck slowly, tapping the rail with a pencil. I kept my hands where he could see them and my eyes on the lifebuoy hanging by the mainmast, the one with the paint half gone. Under the coiled rope beside it we had stowed the sealed packet Tolland would not trust to the post, a letter for a widow in Lisbon, and under that the sort of money a man does not declare. Rain came in sideways off the estuary. The gulls on the wheelhouse roof shifted and complained.

He stopped at the buoy and asked whose ship she had been before. I said she was the Cormorant out of Bristol, sold on in the Azores and renamed by men who could not spell. He turned the ring so the stencil showed: two letters and a surname, H. Carrow. Then he looked at me properly for the first time since he had come aboard.

My father served on the Cormorant, he said. Nineteen years old, and he came home with nothing but that buoy's twin. He handed the pencil back, pressed a chalk mark onto the ring, and stepped down onto the quay without asking what was under the rope. I watched the mark dry in the rain.