Black fine line tattoo of a vertical arrow made of dots, dashes and chevrons running down the inner forearm.

Vertical arrow line tattoo on a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A vertical column of small black marks runs along a pale forearm, starting with an outlined arrowhead at the top and ending with three stacked chevrons at the bottom. Between them sit short single strokes and evenly spaced dots, all drawn with fine, consistent linework. The image is black and white, with the skin filling most of the frame against a dark background.

Fine line Geometric Forearm Arrow Chevron Dot Line Minimal

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mind the swell off the Scillies, Tomasz said, and mind the dots, because they're the sounding marks and the sounding marks are what kept us off the Seven Stones in the fog of '58. He tapped the chart with a thumb gone soft from forty years of salt. Every dot a fathom we counted aloud, and every stroke between them a bell we rang so the men at the bow would know the lead was true.

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The arrowhead at the top was the captain's mark, the one we steered by when the stars went out. The three chevrons at the bottom, that was the old Admiralty habit of marking a shoal with three hatches, so you'd never forget where the rocks lay even after you'd forgotten your own name. Nobody aboard the Marguerite could read the chart without them. Old Pieter swore the chevrons were stacked for the three boys he lost to the Bay, but Pieter also swore the Marguerite could sail on fog alone, and she nearly did.

The night we came round the point, the lead line snapped at the fourth dot. We had only the strokes to go on. Tomasz counted them in the dark, one bell, two bells, a long silence, then the last stroke and the hiss of the water turning under the keel. He never told the owners how close it was. He only said that when the sea goes black, a man can still follow a line of small true marks if he trusts the person who drew them.

So when you read it going up the arm, start from the bottom, where the danger is, and work your way to the arrow. That's the proper way to take a passage. Now pass me the rum, and mind the swell.