Traditional style flash drawing of a shark wearing a top hat, monocle and tailcoat inside a rope border, with no body placement shown.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Shark in top hat and tailcoat in a rope frame

Traditional · Colour · Flash

A grinning shark in a black top hat, a monocle and a dark tailcoat with a green and red cravat, drawn in front of an open mouth full of teeth. The bold black outlines and smooth shading sit against a mostly orange and tan background enclosed by a brown rope circle. The composition is centred and sits neatly within the circular frame.

Traditional Shark Top hat Monocle Teeth Rope

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The gentleman came aboard at Brentford with his hat already on and a monocle screwed into one eye, which was the first thing I didn't like. He paid for the passage in crisp notes, asked for the seaward locks, and sat on the coal hatch as if it were a club chair. My father always said never trust a passenger who smiles with his whole face, and this one never stopped smiling, though his mouth was rather more of it than a man ought to own.

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We worked the Thames for three days. He took his tea black and his biscuits whole, and when the boy at Teddington lock called him a fish he only tipped his hat and said the boy had the fins for it. Every time the tow line snagged he laughed, a deep, wet sound, and his cravat, green with a red stripe, flapped like a flag over a row of teeth that caught the lamplight one by one.

At Kew I asked him why he was going out to sea in a tailcoat. He turned the monocle on me and said the sea had invited him to dinner, and that a shark who arrived in shabby clothes would never be seated. I thought it was a joke until the tide turned under us and I saw his fin cut the water beside the barge, keeping pace, neat as a footman.

At the sea lock he stepped onto the quay, bowed, and left his top hat on the coil of rope by the tiller with a banknote tucked under the band. I still have it. On wet nights, when the cabin creaks, I hear that low laugh out past the breakwater, and I think he must have found his table.