Fine line black seahorse, ship's wheel and star tattoos on the fingers of a hand, with a small anchor-like mark on the ring finger.

Small nautical finger tattoos on a hand

Fine line · Hand · Black and grey · Photo

A close photograph of the back of a hand with several small black tattoos on the fingers. A seahorse sits on the middle finger, with a ship's wheel above it, and a small eight-pointed star is on the little finger. A tiny anchor-like symbol is on the ring finger. The linework is thin and simple, with no shading or colour, and the tattoos are set against plain skin with pale pink nail polish.

Fine line Hand Seahorse Ship's wheel Star Anchor Nautical

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

At ten past three the ward at Scarrow Bay Hospital went quiet in the way Ines had learned to trust, the monitors ticking like a slow clock and the corridor lights dimmed to half. Bed six had been asking for his logbook since midnight. Mr Renn had fished out of Whitby for forty years before his chest gave out, and he would not sleep without the tide tables for the morning.

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"It's in the locker, under the radio," he said, when she finally found it, a cloth-bound book gone soft at the corners. He opened it on the blanket with hands that shook less than they had on Tuesday. Inside, among pencilled bearings and the weights of old catches, was a page of tiny drawings: a ship's wheel, an anchor no bigger than a grain of rice, an eight-pointed star, and a seahorse curled like a question mark. "Found the seahorse on the harbour wall at Lerwick," he said. "Thought my Maud would laugh. She said the male carries the eggs. I said then I'd have to carry something."

Ines read the tide times aloud while he traced the star with his thumb. Low water at 06:12, wind backing north-west. He nodded at each figure as if checking it against something only he could see. Around half four the lamp at the nurses' station flickered, and he asked her to look out of the window, which faced the harbour and the black hump of the pier.

"Star's for getting home," he said. "Wheel's for steering. Anchor's for not going." He closed the book and pressed it flat under his palm. At first light she watched the boats come in past the breakwater, one by one, their lamps going out as the sun lifted over the headland. She wrote the bearings in her own notebook, then, because she had nothing else to give him, the tide times, and left them on the locker where he would see them when he woke.