Line drawing of a traditional-style sailor with a cap and pipe, holding a rose, drawn in grey ink on the side of a brown leather boot.

Sailor and rose design on a leather boot

Traditional · Black and grey · Flash

A grey line drawing of a bearded sailor in a peaked cap, smoking a pipe, with a rose or flower at the lower left. The linework is simple and even, with minimal shading, and the design sits centrally on the side panel of a brown leather boot. The background is a plain grey surface, and the overall composition is close and well lit.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Ada, the lock keeper at Hemingford has finally stopped pretending he doesn't know my name, so I must be getting respectable. The Mary Ellen took on coal at Ely on Tuesday and we've been poling her up the Great Ouse since, slow as a Sunday. Your nephew asked me to draw him a ship, so I drew one with a man at the tiller, and he wanted to know if the man was me. I said he was a sailor, which is near enough.

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The pipe is dead, I'm afraid, though I still carry it for company. Captain Stroud smokes his in the wheelhouse and I stand well upwind. Last night he told me about his rose. He had it done in Gravesend in 1911 by a man who charged him a shilling and a pint, and he swears the petals came out the wrong colour because the fellow only had blue ink. He has been trying to get back to that port ever since to ask for a correction.

I've decided to keep my own rose for Mother. I bought a root cutting at Ely market for sixpence, wrapped it in wet sacking, and it rode in the bow locker all the way up. It's in a tin pot by the stove now, with two buds, which is more than the Stroud rose ever managed. Give her this letter and tell her to take the cutting out to the yard on Sunday, not before the frost has gone.

Your loving brother, Tom

P.S. The boots held up through the Fen mud. Tell Father I did not wear them to church.

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