Two black ink calf tattoos on a beach: a ship's wheel on a man's left leg and an anchor on a woman's right leg, each with script wording above and below.

Ship's wheel and anchor calf tattoos

Traditional · Calf · Black and grey · Photo

Two people stand in shallow surf on a sandy beach, showing tattoos on their lower legs. The man's calf has a black ship's wheel with short script wording above and below it, and the woman's calf has a black anchor with script wording above and below it. The linework is bold and solid, with no colour, and the faces are not visible.

Traditional Lettering Calf Ship's wheel Anchor Script Nautical Lettering

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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

Nobody in the harbour believed Tom Varley would ever sit still for a tattoo, so when he came up the slipway in July with sand on his legs and a grin like a split sail, Maggie Crane put down her net and waited for the punchline.

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There was no punchline. Tom had a ship's wheel inked into his skin at a parlour in Hull, the spokes black and heavy the way a proper wheel should be, with words curling above and below it that he had made the artist write out twice. Be the one to guide me, the top line said. Maggie read it and went red to the ears, because she was the one who had told him, a week earlier on the breakwater, that a man who would not be steered was no use to anyone.

She went to Hull herself the following Saturday with a crab line knotted round her wrist for luck. The anchor she chose was plain and stubborn, its flukes hooking over the words she dictated to the same tired artist: don't never hold me down. Tom laughed until he had to sit on the kerb. Then he took her hand and said the anchor was the sensible half of the deal, since somebody had to stop them drifting out past the Scar in a fog.

The wheel and the anchor still argue on their two lower legs whenever the tide comes in over the sand, and the old men on the quay say it is the most honest contract they have seen in Staithes. Maggie keeps the crab line in a drawer. It has never once been needed to tie anything down.