Traditional style colour tattoo of a ship at sunset in a circular medallion with flowers and a lower urn-like motif, on the upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Ship and flowers in a traditional medallion on the upper arm

Traditional · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

A circular medallion sits on the upper arm, showing a sailing ship on the water in front of a red and orange sunset with stylised mountains. Below it, a patterned urn-shaped motif is decorated with red flowers and dark green leaves. Bold black outlines define the shapes, with solid fills in red, orange, green, teal and yellow, and the composition is framed by flowers at the top.

Traditional Upper arm Ship Sunset Flower Mountain Leaves Medallion

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You climb the iron stairs at Gannet Point with the paraffin lamp swinging from one fist, two hours before the sun gives up over the water. Your uncle has already gone down to the cottage with his cough. Below the gallery the sea is the colour of pewter, and a barque is standing in from the west with every topsail still set, far too much canvas for the wind, you think, unless her captain has never heard of this coast.

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You trim the wick, polish the lens with the chamois, and do not look at the ship again until the sun drops and bleeds red across the bar. Then you do look. She is closer than she ought to be. You can make out a figure at her wheel, small as a pin, and men on her yards hauling sail as the light turns orange, then purple. Cloud stands up behind her to the north in rough peaks, like a sketch someone has not finished. You count the seconds of the lamp's turn against the rail.

The rule is that the light is lit and the logbook written before anything else. You write Barque Ellen Marr standing in, sunset, wind south-west, visibility good, and your hand is steadier than you expected. Then you take the lamp back up. Nothing you do will move her. Only the light can tell her where the rocks are, so you turn the great lens until the beam sweeps across the swell and finds her hull.

Next morning she rides at anchor in the lee of the point, her paint unmarked. A boatman rows over with a crate of oranges and a note in a careful hand: We saw your light and steered by it. Keep it burning. You fold the note into the logbook at that day's page, beside the red sunset you forgot to write down.