Ship's wheel and Home Sweet Ocean banner
Traditional · Hand · Colour · Photo
A ship's wheel sits over a circle of green and teal waves, with a ribbon banner across the centre reading HOME SWEET OCEAN in black capitals. The bold black outlines and solid fills of green, teal, tan and red are typical of traditional American flash work. The design fills the centre of the back of the hand, with a few other tattoos partly visible at the edges of the frame.
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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction
Dear Nell,
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We lost the boy Pim off the Hebrides run last Tuesday, and nobody on the Brightwater has said his name at the tea table since, so I'm telling you instead. He was the one with the wheel and the ribbon, the one who'd bang his enamel mug on the galley hatch every morning and say home sweet ocean as if it were a joke he'd had to earn. Mr Okafor, who has fed these men for thirty years, used to tell him the sea doesn't do sweet.
Pim bought a tin of peppermints from the chandler at Stornoway and kept it in the drawer under the chopping board. On Wednesday the drawer stood open and the tin was gone. In its place was a scrap of galley paper with three words in his square capitals: FOR THE COOK. I found it while scraping the griddle and I haven't told the mate. I'm not sure who I'd be telling it to.
Last night the swell came up and the jars on the shelves started knocking against each other like they were arguing. I stood at the range with a ladle, thinking he'd be laughing at me for being so jumpy. Then I set one peppermint on the rail above the stove, the way he used to, and when the ship rolled it slid off into the bilge. I let it go. Somewhere below, the ocean took it, and I suppose that is what the old fool meant all along.
Your brother, Davy
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