Traditional style colour tattoo of a clenched fist gripping a wrench, with the words Working Class, red stars and flowers, on a limb.

Working Class fist and wrench

Traditional · Other · Mixed · Photo

A clenched fist grips a spanner in the centre of the design, with the words WORKING CLASS arched across the top left. Shaded grey-green fist and wrench sit over a red and yellow sunburst, with dark grey and red leaves and a teal five-petal flower at the bottom right. Bold black outlines and smooth shading give a classic traditional finish, and the design is photographed close up on a limb.

Traditional Other Fist Flower Leaves Star Sunburst Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell, we lost the port shaft bearing two days out from Valparaíso, and for six hours the whole ship shuddered like a wet dog. Mr Hollis wanted it pulled and sent home for, which would have meant a month in port waiting on parts. Tully said no before anyone asked him. He went down into the tunnel with a lamp in his teeth and a box of wrenches his father carried in a yard on the Tyne, and he did not come up for eleven hours.

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I held the lamp for most of it. You will laugh, but I learned more about patience from watching his hands than I ever learned at school. He does not swear when a nut seizes. He just leans on the spanner until the nut gives, the way a man leans on a door he knows is only stuck. The stokers call him the Bolton Bulldog, though I have never once seen him hit anybody. When the bearing finally took the load, he sat on the plates with grease to his elbows and laughed like a boy.

The captain's note in the log says the repair was carried out by the engineers. Tully read it over my shoulder and folded it into his shirt pocket. He says the men who do the work ought to be the ones remembered, and that a ship is only a tin box until somebody makes it go. This morning the sun came up red over the swell, the same colour as the firebox door, and Tully stood at the rail with his cap in his hand and said that one's ours as well. Write to me soon. Your loving brother, Ned.