Traditional style colour tattoo of a sailor pin-up woman holding a ship's wheel above an anchor, placed on the upper arm.

Sailor pin-up with ship's wheel on upper arm

Traditional · Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

A woman with dark curled hair and a bow stands behind a brown ship's wheel, gripping its spokes, with a grey anchor and rope forming the base. The bold black outlines and flat blue jacket, red neckerchief and white blouse give it a classic old-school look. The design fills most of the frame against pale skin, with a lace garment visible at the right edge.

Traditional Upper arm Sailor Pin-up Woman Ship's wheel Anchor Rope Bow

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

Dear Ned, you will not believe what the Gannet did on Tuesday. We were sixty yards off the Skerrow rocks with fog thick as porridge, and Captain Ruddock took one look at the water, went below to find his pipe, and left me holding the wheel. I had only ever steered her in harbour, round the mooring buoy with Dad shouting from the pier. Out there the spokes kicked in my hands like something alive, and the rope creaked against the rail in a way that made me think of Mother's knitting needles.

Keep reading

I kept her head to the swell the way you showed me, one hand over the other, and I did not look at the rocks once. Mrs Lennie said afterwards that she saw me from her cottage window, standing square as a bollard at the wheel. I suppose I looked like someone who knew what she was doing, which is more than I felt.

When the fog lifted, Ruddock came up the ladder with his pipe still unlit, looked at me, and said nothing at all. Then he tapped the anchor chain with his boot, which is what he does when he approves, and went back below. I have decided that counts as a medal.

Come home at the spring tides, Ned. The wheel is yours to mind when you're back, though I warn you the Gannet and I have come to an understanding, and she will not take kindly to being handed over. Your loving sister, Maud.