Black and grey realism tattoo on the thigh showing a walrus wearing a peaked naval cap, with a sailing ship and cloudy sky behind it.

Walrus in naval cap with sailing ship

Realism · Thigh · Black and grey · Photo

A large walrus wearing a peaked officer's cap with a badge dominates the design, with its tusks and whiskered muzzle rendered in fine detail. A sailing ship on a rough sea sits to the upper left, set within soft, smoky clouds that fade into the skin. The piece uses smooth grey shading and high contrast highlights in black ink only.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Ada,

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The lamps along the Humber were all lit when the tender brought me in, and the dock men stood with their mouths open at the sight of Commander Oswin Pell stepping off the gangway in full dress. I had polished the badge with boot blacking and a cloth from your mother's sewing basket. Nobody on the quay laughed, though I heard one of them try.

The ship is the Margaret Tully, three masts and a foresail patched with old flour sacks, and she has been gone eleven months among the floes. We brought back forty tons of sealskin, a crate of salt cod, and a crew who never once looked at the sky without frowning. I have been her second officer since the spring. My tusks are the only thing about me the men still look at twice.

Tonight the clouds sit low over the river, the same grey the Captain daubed on the wheelhouse wall before he died. I cannot sleep in a proper bed. I sit by the window in my cap and count the masts in the basin, a habit I brought home from the ice and cannot seem to put down.

Tomorrow I will walk up to the chandler's in Scale Lane and buy the wool you asked for. Keep the lamp lit. I will see you before the tide turns.

Yours, Oswin

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