Fine line black crown tattoo and script on a woman's forearm, shown near a wristwatch while she rests her hand on a car steering wheel.

Small crown and script tattoo on a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A woman rests her hand on a steering wheel, showing a small crown tattoo on the inner forearm above a wristwatch. Below the watch, a few lines of thin script are visible but only partly legible. The linework is delicate and the ink is solid black, with the subject shown in a warm, softly lit car interior.

Fine line Forearm Crown Script Watch

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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

Sit yourself nearer the stove, you'll want it for this, the wind's come round to the north-east and the boats won't be out before the tide turns. My grandfather had the stamp made in Hull, a little brass crown no bigger than a farthing, and every barrel the curing house sent south carried it. Nobody in the fleet asked why. The curer's name was on the lids, but the crown was how you knew a barrel had been packed by the Lowther women, who worked the gutting sheds through the winter while the men were away.

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In the winter of the great blow, nineteen boats went out from the harbour and eleven came back. My grandfather's brother Eli was on the Constant Mary, and he did not come back. Eli's wife, Ada, took his watch from the nail where he'd left it and wore it on her wrist for the rest of her life, though it had stopped at the hour the lifeboat turned for home. Under the strap she pricked a line of writing into her skin, the words Eli had said to her on the quay: Mind the lamp, I'll be whistling.

She never went near the water again. But she kept the stamp, and every autumn she set a crown on the first barrel of the season and sent it down the hill to the men who were still going out. Nobody asked her why. They knew the crown meant someone was keeping count.