A load line is not decoration. It is a legal instrument painted on steel: a twelve-inch disc bisected by an eighteen-inch line, flanked by two cast letters naming the society that surveyed the hull, with the seasonal comb — TF, F, T, S, W, WNA — stepping off a vertical spine at separately computed heights.

This system takes its whole vocabulary from that amidships panel. Black-painted topsides as ground, weathered plate grey as primary, white lead for every mark, red-oxide at the boot-topping and burnished bronze on the bolted maker's plate. Type is condensed and stencil-hard for the hull, slab and monospaced for the survey certificate that records the same numbers in ruled columns.