Small black fine line anchor tattoo on the outer ankle, shown against pale skin with a patterned sock at the top of the frame.

Small anchor tattoo on an ankle

Fine line · Ankle · Black and grey · Photo

A small, simple anchor is drawn in solid black ink on the outer side of an ankle, with a ring at the top, a crossbar and curved flukes. The linework is even and clean, with no shading. The anchor sits near the centre of the frame against a plain skin background, with the edge of a patterned sock visible at the top.

Fine line Ankle Anchor

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The anchor came up out of the silt at Hob's Creek on the third tide after the gale, black with weed and no bigger than a child's forearm. Nell Tregarthen knelt on the wet stones and scraped at it with a fish knife while her brother shouted from the boat that it was rubbish, a bit of mooring from some dinghy, not worth the rope.

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It wasn't rubbish. The ring was worn smooth by a hand, and the flukes had been filed square the way old Amos Pell did his, the smith at Gullhaven who had made the anchors for every boat in the bay until his hands gave out. Nell had watched him heat the iron and hammer the shank over his knee. He used to say a small anchor held as well as a large one if you set it right, only it asked for more patience.

She carried it up the shingle on her hip. The cottage door stood open. Amos sat in his chair by the window looking at the water, and he didn't turn when she set the anchor on the table beside his tea. "Lost that off the Gannet in forty-one," he said. "Thought the sea had it for good."

Nell sat down across from him and wiped the grit from her palms. "It was holding a dinghy," she said, "and you always said whatever you make holds." He laughed, the first time in weeks, and reached out to run a thumb over the flukes. Outside the tide was turning, and somewhere down the harbour a bell started up, steady and unhurried, the way it always did when a boat was coming in.