Black and grey realism tattoo on a forearm showing a sundial compass, a full moon and a sailing ship on waves, shown across three photographs.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Ship, moon and sundial compass on a forearm

Realism · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo covers the forearm and shows a detailed sundial or compass on the left, with a full moon, clouds and a tall-masted ship on rolling waves on the right. Soft shading and fine hatched linework create depth in the clouds, sails and water, with faint map-like lines in the background. The image is shown as three side-by-side views of the same forearm, all in black and grey ink.

Realism Forearm Compass Ship Moon Cloud Wave Map Sail

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The brass sundial had been stopped at a quarter to four since the winter the Margate packet went down, and Hettie Coyle had never once thought to wind it, because nobody in Cromer wound clocks for the dead. Her father kept it on the sill of the boarding house kitchen, facing the sea, as if the hours might still be counted from it. On the Thursday the lodgers went out to see the moon rise over the harbour wall, she found him at the table with a chart spread flat and weighted with the teapot, tracing a line in pencil that ran off the edge of the paper.

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"Your uncle's ship," he said, without looking up. "The Bessie Ann. Three masts, painted sails, a figurehead nobody could name. She sailed out on a moon like that one, and she sailed back under it too, after the gale had blown the rigging to ribbons. Stood off the Haisborough Sands for two nights. I used to think they'd come back full of stories. Only ever came back with the one."

Hettie picked up the sundial and turned it in her hands, feeling for the gnomon's crooked tooth. The brass was warm from the range. Outside, the cloud bank over the water had gone the colour of old pewter, and the first silver disc of the moon was pushing through it like a coin through wet cloth.

She set the dial down facing the window again. "It's still a quarter to four," she said. "Maybe that's the hour she came in."

Her father folded the chart along its tired creases, slowly, the way he did everything now, and for once he did not argue.