Black and grey Traditional style tattoo of a wooden cross with a crucifix and a banner reading PHILIPPIANS, with 4:13 beside it, on the upper arm.

Wooden cross with banner and scripture reference

Traditional · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A wooden cross dominates the design, with a crucifix figure draped across it and a curled banner wrapped around the lower half that reads PHILIPPIANS. The numbers 4:13 sit to the right of the banner in simple black linework. The shading is soft grey with dark outlines, and the composition is centred on a close view of the skin.

Traditional Upper arm Cross Banner Scripture Wood Figure Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Cook had been at the bread since four bells, and still the dough would not rise in the cold. Mrs Hollis came down the companionway with wet on her shawl and asked whether the carpenter had finished his cross, because the mate wanted it lashed above the hatch before the next squall.

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"He's been at it since the Tuesday," Cook said. "Says the spar split too clean for a plain brace."

The spar had come off the Ardent when she went onto the Skerries in February, a length of ash no one wanted to claim. Tobias Kell hauled it aboard, planed the grey off it, and sat with his knife in the lamplight until the shape of a crossbeam showed itself. He carved the figure last, a thin man stretched along the upright, his head fallen to one side. Cook watched him work and said nothing about the hands.

On the Sunday he sat reading the Epistle to the Philippians, his finger under the line about being content in plenty and in want, and he tapped the verse near the end. "I can do all things," he read, and then, looking at the rain on the porthole, "through him that strengtheneth me. Four thirteen. Daft little number to carry about."

They fixed the cross that evening. When the squall came through in the night the timber groaned against its lashings but held, and in the grey morning Cook stood under it with flour on her hands, watching the carved banner catch the light above the stove.