Traditional style colour tattoo on a forearm showing a swallow, a red and black nautical star, two dice and red-starred cylinders on a teal background.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Swallow, dice and nautical star on a forearm

Traditional · Forearm · Colour · Photo

A bold traditional tattoo showing a swallow in flight in front of a red and black nautical star, with two cream dice showing red pips below and two red-starred cylinders on either side. The linework is thick and black, with solid fills and soft grey shading on the dice and swallow. Colour is bright, using red, yellow, teal and cream, and the design is arranged in a central column that fills the limb.

Traditional Forearm Swallow Dice Rose Star

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The swallow came aboard off Finisterre, a worn-out little thing that dropped onto the forecastle table between two bowls of burgoo and would not be shifted. Nobody wanted to be the one to put it over the side. A bird on the rail meant land within a day's sail, and the crew of the Mary Ann Pell argued about land and dice in equal measure.

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The dice belonged to Jem Harrow. He had carved them from a scrap of oak and dyed the pips red with beetroot, and he had won more with them than the bosun had with his lies. That night he rolled three sixes and the watch groaned. When the glass turned he rolled them again, and the swallow stood up on the table, shook out its blue wings, and nobody laughed. Jem staked his berth, his tot of rum and two tins stamped with red stars, and lost the lot to Dunstan the cook, who had no luck to speak of but a steady hand.

Jem went up at dawn to find the swallow gone from the table. It was perched on the brass rail above the wheel, facing north-east where a grey smudge of coast lay low on the water. He sent the dice down to Dunstan with a scrawled note: keep the luck, I am following the bird home.

By evening the Mary Ann Pell raised the Humber light, and the swallow dropped onto the quay beside a coil of wet rope. Jem found the dice on the planks where Dunstan had left them. He turned the oak over in his palm and counted the red pips, six to a face, and he kept them in his pocket and never rolled them again.