Small black line tattoo of a ship's wheel, an anchor and a wave on the outer ankle, shown in two photographs.

Ship's wheel, anchor and wave on ankle

Ankle · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows three small nautical symbols in a row: a ship's wheel, an anchor and a curling wave. The linework is solid black with no shading, and the wheel and anchor are drawn with slightly bolder strokes than the wave. The two photographs show the ankle from the side and close up on a cream carpet, with the design sitting just behind the ankle bone.

Ankle Ship's wheel Anchor Wave Nautical

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

The wheel came off the Sarah Lune in a Force Nine off Flamborough Head, and nobody aboard thought to save it except Jack Pell, who was seventeen and had no business being on deck at all. He went down the companion ladder with the spokes still wet in his hands and wedged the oak back onto its shaft with a belaying pin and his own belt, while the skipper bellowed for the mainsail to be struck.

Keep reading

They limped into Bridlington on the morning tide with the rudder hanging crooked and the anchor chain grinding over the bow. Jack sat on the quay wall afterwards, shaking, while the harbourmaster's wife brought him tea in a chipped enamel mug. She looked at his hands, then at the wheel lashed across the deck, and asked him who had taught him knots like that. He said nobody had, and she laughed and said the sea had been teaching him since he was born.

The skipper paid him off in the spring with a week's wages and a sack of ship's biscuits gone soft at the corners. Jack took the coast road home with the sack on his shoulder, past the lighthouse and the chalk cliffs, and by evening he was sitting in a sign-painter's back room in Scarborough. He had a pencil, a sheet of cartridge paper and a clear idea of what he wanted: a wheel first, then an anchor set hard against it, and a single curl of wave trailing off the end like a tide going out.

The painter asked why those three, and Jack told him the wheel was for getting back, the anchor for holding on, and the wave for whatever came next. The painter grunted, said the lines would be too fine for the ink he had, and drew them bolder anyway.