Traditional style flash of a jumping sailor pin-up in red shorts and red heels, with blue tattoo designs on her upper arm, thigh and calf.

Sailor pin-up with tattooed arm and legs

Traditional · Upper arm · Colour · Flash

A full-colour drawing of a pin-up woman in a sailor cap and white collared top, leaping with one arm raised and the other behind her head. Bold black outlines, flat fills and soft highlights define the figure, with small sparkle marks scattered around her. Blue ink designs appear on her upper arm, a rose on her thigh and a shape on her calf, set against a plain cream background.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The tattooist in Pompey had charged Mabel Ash two shillings for the rose and thrown in the anchor for nothing, because he said a girl with a sailor's cap ought to be properly dressed for the sea. Ruth Calloway thought that was rich, coming from a man who had never been further than the Isle of Wight. She stood at the foot of the gangway with her hands in her coat pockets and watched Mabel take the last three steps in one leap, arm flung up as if she were hailing a tram.

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'You'll have the whole Royal Navy looking,' Ruth said. 'Your mum will have a fit.' Mabel only laughed and pushed her cap back with one finger. Someone had whitewashed stars on the dock wall for the Coronation parade, and a few still showed through the grime. Mabel tapped each one as she passed, as if she were counting the nights until Tuesday.

The ship's bell rang twice. Ruth had bought her passage to Gibraltar with money from the bakery, money meant for the new oven, and had decided she would tell the shop it was a loan. Mabel took her hand and pressed a folded sheet into it, the ink gone blue at the edges where the drizzle had reached it.

'Read it on the boat,' Mabel said. Ruth didn't. She read it on the quay after the ship had slipped its ropes, standing under the whitewashed stars. The letter said only that the rose was for remembering and the anchor was for coming home, and that Mabel would be waiting at the same gangway with her heels on. Ruth folded it twice and laughed out loud, then found she could not stop.

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