Colourful watercolour-style splash tattoo with a pocket watch face and black strap on the inner wrist and forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Watercolour splash and watch on a wrist

Forearm · Colour · Photo

A close photograph of a tattoo on the inner wrist and lower forearm, showing a watch face with hands and numerals inside a black strap band. Loose splashes of blue, purple, pink, red and orange ink spread upward from the watch, with small stars and drips adding detail. The soft, painterly shading contrasts with the crisp outline of the watch, and the blurred background keeps focus on the wrist.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Ada,

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The chronometer went over the side on Tuesday, though nobody will admit it was pushed. Mr Pargeter swears it slipped from the binnacle when the swell caught us off the Azores, but I was on the bridge and saw the lamp swing, and I know what the second mate's face looks like when he has been caught out. Anyway, it is gone, and the captain has ordered every officer to keep his wristwatch set to ship's time until we make Cape Town. Mine is a plain thing on a black leather strap, and I have been trying to paint its face on a spare sheet of paper to keep my hands busy.

The paints came out of my trunk on Wednesday. Father sent me a tin of watercolour cakes the week I signed on, and the paper is blank stock I borrowed from the purser's office, which he will not miss. Last night the sea lay flat and the stars came out so thick over the bow that I could not tell where the sky stopped. I tried to paint them as I saw them, a wash of blue for the water and red for the lamp in the crow's nest, and then the brush slipped and a streak of purple ran down the page like a drip off a wet sail.

The mate found me at it at two bells and I expected a rebuke. Instead he took the page, held it to the lamp, and said the only true clock on a ship is the one that keeps you honest. Then he tapped the dial I had drawn, its hands fixed at a quarter to nine, and said that was the hour the chronometer went under. I had painted it stopped without meaning to.

I keep the time by the stars and my own pulse now, which is steadier than either. The page is folded inside my Bible, and when I open it the colours have bled into one another, blue into red, the way the sky does just before the lamps are lit on deck. Write soon and tell Mother I am eating properly.

Your brother, Tom

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