Black and white photo of two people's sides, each with a fine line script tattoo on the ribs: a ship's wheel with a quote on the left and an anchor with a quote on the right.

Ship's wheel and anchor with script on the sides

Fine line · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

Two people stand side by side, showing their sides and ribs. The left tattoo is a ship's wheel with the script words 'Be the one to guide me' around it, and the right tattoo is an anchor with the script words 'Just never let me down' beside it. The fine line work is in black ink on a black and white photograph, and the lettering is set in a loose handwritten script.

Fine line Lettering Ribs Ship's wheel Anchor Script Quote Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The herring boats had gone out before the bell, and by midafternoon the wind had swung round to the north-west, which on Skerra meant somebody's husband would not be home for supper. Old Annag Frew stood on the slipway with her shawl pulled tight and watched the grey water for two sails she knew by their patches. Her sons Ewan and Douglas had argued all week over which boat was to lead. Ewan wanted the wheel, the tiller and the reckoning. Douglas wanted the anchor, the heavy rope and the job of holding fast when the rocks came up.

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The island people had a saying that a boat wants a steady hand on the wheel and a hook that does not give. Annag had heard it from her own mother and had never much believed it. Men wanted to be told where to go, she thought, and they wanted someone to stay put while they went. So when the fog came down over the Sound like wet wool, she did what she had always done. She went up to the cottage, lit the lamp in the window, and set two cups of tea on the table in case anyone came in cold.

The boats came in after dark, one behind the other, and the rope ran between them through the last of the fog. Ewan had taken the skerry channel by the sound of the bell buoy, and Douglas had dropped his anchor in the lee of the rocks so the wheel boat could swing free and pick its line. Neither of them said much when they stepped onto the stones. Annag handed each son a cup and saw their hands were shaking the same way.

In the morning she walked down to the slip and found that someone had chalked two lines on the stone, one above the other, in the loose hand the schoolmaster had taught them. She did not rub them out. She let the tide take them slowly over the following week.