Traditional style tattoo of a blue and red swallow above a gold compass rose, framed by red flowers and green leaves on the upper arm.

Swallow and compass on an upper arm

Traditional · Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

A swallow with blue wings and a red breast flies above a gold-rimmed compass with a starburst centre and compass letters N, E, S and W. Red flowers with dark centres and teal leaves surround the base, with small curled vine tendrils and short motion lines around the bird. Bold black outlines and flat, solid colour fill give a classic traditional look against lighter skin on a plain background.

Traditional Upper arm Swallow Compass Flower Leaves Vine Bird

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The swallow dropped onto the binnacle off Ushant with its wings all of a tremble, and Dolly Pascoe swore it had flown straight from her mother's wash-house in Newlyn just to spite the cook. Nobody believed her. Bosun Reuben Tallack took one look at the bird, then at the compass in its brass bowl, and went quiet the way men do when the sea has offered them something they did not ask for.

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The compass had been wrong since the Biscay blow. The needle hung a point west of where the stars said it ought to, and the mate had written it off as iron in the cargo. Reuben had his doubts. He took the little bird in his cupped hands, warm as a new loaf, and felt its heart going like a sewing machine under his thumb. It was the first thing in three weeks that had not been turning round and round in the dark.

They kept to the bird's heading for two days, with Dolly feeding it crumbs of ship's biscuit soaked in tea. On the third morning it lifted off the rail and went west, low over the grey water, then wheeled back once as though to check they were coming. Reuben put the wheel over after it. By dusk the Lizard light showed exactly where the chart said it would, and the needle, for the first time since the blow, pointed true north like a dog that has found its master.

The swallow did not come back. Dolly kept the biscuit in a tin for the rest of the voyage all the same, and when they made Falmouth she tied a red ribbon to the binnacle and said that was the bird's fare paid. Reuben never told the owners about the bird, only that the compass had mended itself, and they were too glad of the cargo to ask how.