Black and grey traditional-style US Navy emblem tattoo on the upper arm, with a NAVY banner, eagle, anchor and the words We Own The Seas.

US Navy emblem on upper arm

Traditional · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows a US Navy emblem with a bold NAVY banner across the top, a winged eagle over a USN anchor, and a laurel wreath below. Scrolled ribbons carry the text Defending Freedom, Since 1775 and We Own The Seas. The linework is bold and the shading is soft and grey, with a faint pinkish tone visible around the skin, and the design is centred on the upper arm.

Traditional Lettering Upper arm Eagle Anchor Banner Laurel wreath Text

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The eagle came down on the third morning out of the Azores, and nobody aboard could agree afterwards whether it had been hunting or simply lost. It landed on the foremast yard with its wings half open, as though the spar had been built for it, and Old Pell the bosun swore it looked the crew over one by one before it settled to sleep.

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The men called it the Admiral. They fed it salt pork and scraps of biscuit, and it took them from the cook's hand without fuss. When the wind turned foul off the Horn and the Gannet's timbers groaned like a sick cow, the Admiral would lift its head and face the bow, and the men took heart, for a bird that stayed was a ship that would not sink, or so the old hands said.

Off the Cape a rogue sea tore the anchor from her bows and the crew went hungry for a week. Pell lay on the deck with his hand over his eyes and said they would not stop until the sea was theirs. The eagle stood on the capstan beside him and did not move. On the eighth day a sail rose out of the haze, a merchant ketch with a rotten hull, and the Gannet's men took her without a shot, because her captain had heard who was coming and had already given up.

When they finally dropped the hook in Portsmouth Harbour, the Admiral opened its wings and rose over the masts. Pell swore it circled once above the ship, then turned out over the water towards the Atlantic, as if it had only been waiting for the Gannet to come home.