Traditional style sleeve tattoo on an upper arm and forearm, featuring red roses, a ship in a bottle and a dagger in bold colour.

Traditional rose and ship sleeve on arm

Traditional · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

A woman's arm is covered in a traditional style sleeve of roses, a ship in a bottle, a dagger and a folded envelope with a small heart. The linework is dark and bold, with solid colour in reds, greens and blues and little use of shading. The sleeve wraps from the upper arm down past the elbow, and a small swallow-like motif sits near the chest, with the face cropped out of the frame.

Traditional Upper arm Forearm Rose Dagger Envelope Heart Swallow Sleeve

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Win,

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You will not believe who came up the hill this morning with his sea chest on a handcart. Tobias Mott, bold as brass, the same man who owed Father eleven weeks and left a ship in a bottle on the parlour mantel as surety. He stood on the step with his cap in his hands and asked whether room four still had the view of the harbour. I told him room four had been let to a commercial traveller in buttons, and that the harbour had not changed its mind about anything in six years.

He laughed at that, which I did not expect. Then he unwrapped a bundle from inside his coat. It was an envelope tied with string, the paper gone soft as cloth, and inside was a letter in my own hand, the one I wrote the winter he sailed and then pretended I had never posted. He had never opened it. He said he had carried it past Madeira and Valparaiso and back again, and had not dared.

I did not invite him in. I told him the bottle was still on the mantel and he could have it back once he paid the eleven weeks, plus the interest Father would have charged, which I have worked out on the back of the ledger and which comes to more than the ship is worth. He said the ship was called Constance and that he had built her through three winters with a knife he kept for the purpose. I said I knew the name. It was painted on the cork.

He is in room four now. I have left the bottle where it stands. Come home at Easter and tell me whether a man can owe a woman a whole life, or only the rent.

Love, Ada