Four black ink tattoos in a collage: a dotted-line paper plane on a wrist, an aeroplane on a forearm over a vintage map, a map of Africa on a upper back, and a sailboat with a star on a forearm.

Travel tattoos: paper plane, Africa, aeroplane and sailboat

Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

The collage shows four black tattoos. A fine line paper plane trails a dotted path on the wrist, an aeroplane silhouette sits on a forearm over a vintage world map, a solid black Africa silhouette sits on the upper back, and a sailboat with a star above it is inked on a forearm. The linework is mostly solid black fill and outline with no visible shading, and the photographs show plain skin and a few background objects.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The smack was called the Evening Star, though her name had been painted over so many times that the star on her bow had nearly flaked away. My uncle Tom sailed her out of Brixham for thirty years, and when his hands gave out he left her to me with a tin of tar and a list of things I would get wrong.

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We went out with the fleet in the grey before dawn, six boats nosing past the breakwater with their sails half up and the skippers calling across the water about the wind. Nobody talked much about stars. They talked about the wind backing west and the price of plaice at market. I kept my eyes on the sky instead, where one bright point hung low over Start Point, and I steered by it the way Tom had taught me. It was not accurate, but it never moved away.

On the third morning the nets came up empty. The other skippers turned for home, shouting that the grounds were fished out, but I stayed on and watched the star fade into daylight. Tom's letter sat folded in the wheelhouse drawer, and all it said was go where the others won't. So I hauled again, further out, and the net came up heavy and silver with mackerel.

When I tied up that evening the harbour master counted the crates twice. Tom was waiting on the quay in his old coat. He didn't ask a single question. He looked at the wet deck, then up at the pale sky, and said, 'Took you long enough.'

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