Black and grey flash design of a skull above a sailing ship on waves, with a mermaid resting on a treasure chest below, shown without a body placement.

Skull, pirate ship and mermaid design

Neo-trad · Black and grey · Flash

A black and grey illustrated design stacked vertically, with a large skull at the top above a three-masted sailing ship with crossed swords on its sail. Below, a mermaid with long flowing hair reclines beside an open treasure chest spilling coins and jewels, with a small skull and a sea creature among the contents. Fine pencil-like hatching and ornate scrollwork frame the ship and waves, with no colour ink used.

Neo-trad Skull Sailing ship Mermaid Wave Scrollwork Coin Sea creature

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Hester, the Marigold is not where the charts put her, which is the first honest thing that ship has done since your father bought her. We found her at dawn off the Crane Rocks, forty fathoms down and sitting upright as a church pew, her topsails still shaped like held breath. Pell wanted to cut the figurehead off for the museum at Carrow, but she is a mermaid carved in pale oak, combing her hair with one hand, and when the net came up she turned her face away from us as if we had been rude.

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Below deck the hold was flooded, but the chest was lashed to the stern timbers exactly where the log said it would be. We pried the lid with a crowbar and the water came out in a rush. There were coins everywhere, silver gone black, a ruby the size of a thumbnail, and in the corner a little skull no bigger than a walnut, grinning as if it had won the argument. Something grey with too many legs slid out from under the coins and went for my glove. Pell laughed so hard he dropped the lamp, and for a while the only light was the glow of the gold where the torch caught it.

I cut the crossed swords from the foresail because the old captain stitched them there to dare the Admiralty, and I wanted to see whether he was lying. He was not. The blades were real steel gone soft with rust, and when I pressed my thumb to a hilt it left a clean print in the green. I have kept one coin for you, the one with the gull on its face. It is still warm from my pocket as I write this.

We have left the chest where it lies. Pell says we are fools and the Crown will come asking, but the mermaid has turned round now, facing the open water, and I think she means for us to go home.