Black and grey tattoo of a three-masted sailing ship silhouetted against a pale moon, with its reflection on water, on a calf.

Sailing ship silhouette against a moon on a calf

Calf · Black and grey · Photo

A sailing ship with full rigging stands in solid black silhouette, set against a soft grey circle representing a moon. Below the hull, the water is shown as broken horizontal strokes that mirror the ship. The shading is smooth and the composition is centred on the calf.

Calf Ship Sailing ship Moon Sea Reflection Rigging Silhouette

Find an artist for this

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

The galley door sticks in the swell, and you put your shoulder to it the way Mrs Ashdown taught you, one hand on the rail and the kettle already sliding toward the fiddle. Moonlight comes through the porthole and lies across the deck like spilt milk. Cook says it is always the same moon, but you have stopped believing him, because tonight it has followed the ship through three different ports.

Keep reading

Mr Pell sends you up with the biscuit tin for the watch. On deck the rigging is black lace against a pale disc, every yard and stay drawn sharp as a pen line. You count the topsails the way your father counted ewes on the hill, because counting keeps you from thinking about the boy who went over off the Horn. Below the bow the sea holds the whole ship again, upside down, broken into dark strokes that rise and fall with the hull, as if someone had tried to paint the water and given up halfway.

Back in the galley the dough has risen past the bowl and is pressing at the cloth like something wanting out. You punch it down and knead until your forearms burn, and the work steadies you the way the wheel steadies the helmsman. Pell comes in, sees the flour on your cheek, says nothing, and sets a cup of cocoa by your elbow. On this ship that counts as tenderness.

At dawn you carry the loaves up in a cloth. The moon has sunk behind the mainmast, and the sea is only mirror now, the ship drawn on it twice, once in timber and once in water. For the first time since the Horn you cannot tell which of them is carrying the other, and you find you do not mind.