Blue line drawing in traditional style of a moustached man whose chest and shoulders show a woman's portrait with a rose, a ship, an anchor and hearts, framed by dotwork shading and stars.

Tattooed man with woman portrait and nautical motifs

Traditional · Colour · Flash

A monochrome blue illustration of a man with a moustache, his shoulders and chest marked with a woman's head framed by a large rose, plus a ship, an anchor and small hearts. Bold outlines and fine radiating lines sit beside stippled dotwork shading on the shoulders and the base of the heart-shaped frame. The figure is centred on a cream background scattered with blue asterisks and dots.

Traditional Dotwork Man Rose Ship Anchor Heart Star Moustache Sailor

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You reach the Coldharbour Inn just as the pass closes behind you, snow thick enough to swallow the lamp at the gate. Mrs Pell takes your wet coat without a word and sets a tankard of mulled cider on the bench nearest the fire. The room smells of tar, wet wool and burnt sugar. In the corner a man is counting coins onto the table in piles of three, and he doesn't look up when the door bangs.

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"He's come up every winter since the Marguerite went down," Mrs Pell says, as if you'd asked. "Says the sea never froze once in eleven years, and he means to make up for it." The man glances over, nods as though you've agreed to something, and slides a card across the table. On it is a woman's face, pale, a flower tucked behind one ear, and beneath her a single word in careful capitals: HOME. The back is blank except for a thumbprint of blue ink, dried at the edges.

Through the night he tells you about the Marguerite's last crossing, how the spray froze on the rigging into glass and the crew sang to keep their hands moving. He never says who the woman is, and you don't ask. Past midnight the wind drops and the fire sinks to red, and you realise the story has become yours to carry down the pass in the morning.

At dawn the snow has stopped and the stars are still out, small and hard as nail heads above the moor. You scrape the frost from the inside of the window to watch the road and find the cold has already drawn something on the glass: a ship under full sail, its wake curling toward a harbour that isn't there. The man is gone. His three piles of coins stand untouched on the table, and the card lies face up, the woman looking out at you as if she knows exactly where the water is.