Colour tattoo of the Tottenham Hotspur crest on an upper arm, with a banner reading Tottenham, a cockerel, two red lions, a Hotspur banner with 1882, and a blue shield.

Tottenham Hotspur crest on upper arm

Traditional · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

The tattoo shows the Tottenham Hotspur club crest, with a cockerel above a circular monogram, red lions either side, and a banner reading Hotspur with 1882. A blue shield with the same monogram sits below, and a banner reading Tottenham sits at the top. The bold black outlines are filled with blue and red ink, with grey sunburst shading behind the cockerel.

Traditional Upper arm Lion Shield Banner Ribbon Monogram Sunburst

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The cockerel came aboard at Gravesend in a flour sack, and Tom Lusk swore it would be in the pot before the Nore. It was a scrawny thing with a blue-black sheen to its tail and a temper like wet tinder. Nobody could explain why it wouldn't die. We named it Hotspur, after the fellow in the old play who would not sit still for anyone, and the name stuck the way tar does.

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All autumn it rode the foredeck of the Mary Ellen, crowing at lighthouses and at the pilot's cat. The skipper gave up on the pot. When the fog lifted off the estuary the bird would climb onto the cabin roof and crow until the cook threw a boot at it, and the mist would part in long grey rays over the water, like a stage curtain going up. Nobody aboard had ever seen a creature so pleased with itself.

In November a squall took the mainsail off its yard, and by dusk we were lying on our beam ends off Harwich with the lamp swinging on its hook. Lusk went over the side trying to reach the sheet. We found him in the morning wedged against a buoy, half drowned and cursing. Hotspur was sitting on the wheel spokes above him, soaked to the skin, and it would not stop crowing until he stood up.

Lusk had that bird put on his arm in Limehouse the winter after, with a ring of letters where its heart should be and a shield below for the ship we never lost. He said it was a debt, though he never said to whom.