On 2 July 1893 Richard With's DS Vesteraalen ran Trondheim to Hammerfest in about sixty-seven hours. Mail that had needed three weeks in summer and five months in winter arrived in seven days. The coastal express was not a cruise; it was infrastructure with a printed departure time.

The look comes from the ship at the quay and the paper that ran it: black painted steel plating, a white superstructure, one red mark on the funnel, and port after port down a narrow column with a hairline rule between each.