Side-on is the working view of a trawler

One trawler, side-on, filling the width edge to edge. Heavy hull, plain and simple. Two derricks angled out and down, a tyre fender hung at the bow, four small marks above the wheelhouse.

Every line on it is doing a job. None of them are there to look nautical.

Why is the boat drawn side-on rather than at an angle?

Because side-on is the one view that shows what a trawler is actually built to do.

A three-quarter angle flatters a hull and hides the gear. Side-on puts the derricks in silhouette, angled out and down from the wheelhouse, and that angle is the whole working principle of the boat: two beams dragged along the seabed, one either side, hauled up and stowed for the run home. A trawler is wide when it's working and narrow when it's steaming, and side-on is the only angle that shows both states in one drawing.

What are the derricks actually for?

Holding the beams that keep the mouth of the net open along the bottom.

Each derrick swings a beam out from the hull, and each beam pins one side of the trawl's mouth apart while it's dragged. Drawn angled out and down, the way they sit when the gear is over the side, the derricks explain the hull shape above them — everything in the working half of the boat is built around getting those two arms out and back in again, over and over, in whatever the sea is doing that day.

Why four marks for gulls, and not a net?

Because gulls are a more honest way to say the net is coming up than drawing the net would be.

A gull won't follow a trawler that's simply steaming — there's nothing to eat behind it. A gull follows a boat that's hauling, because a haul brings up more than the target catch and a bird knows exactly what that means. Four small marks above the wheelhouse say the same thing a stencil of a net would, without needing the net drawn at all, which keeps the whole print to one clean silhouette instead of two competing ones.

Can this carry a real vessel's markings?

Its shape and rig, yes — nothing about a trawler's hull or gear belongs to anyone. Its name and registration are a different matter.

A boat's own name, painted across the transom, and its port of registry are assigned to one specific vessel, the way a plate is assigned to one car — printing a real one puts somebody's actual boat on a stranger's chest, which needs their say-so the same way any licensed mark would. A silhouette with no name on it carries none of that. If a real vessel is the point, ask first; if it isn't, the invented boat costs nothing and still reads as exactly this kind of trawler.

Does the same drawing work for other working boats?

The logic does. The gear in silhouette changes with the boat.

A gantry crane drawn on the same diagonal-versus-vertical logic picks out its own working angle the way the derricks pick out this one — a crab boat's pot hauler, a scalloper's dredge arms, a longliner's reel would each replace the derricks and still keep the side-on rule, because the rule is about showing the gear, not about this particular boat.

Isn't a cargo hull just a big grey shape with nothing to look at?

A trawler isn't drawn as cargo. The hull is heavy because the gear hung off it is heavy, and that weight is exactly what the drawing is arguing for.

Simplify the hull too far and the derricks lose their anchor — they need something solid to swing from, in the picture as much as at sea. A heavy, plain hull under a pair of working arms reads as a boat built around a job, which is closer to true than a hull drawn light and decorative.

Does it print well?

Yes, kept to flat cream on navy with hard edges throughout.

The hull, derricks and fender are all large, closed shapes with no fine texture inside them, which is what survives a print run without going soft — bold shapes hold their edges on fabric the way gradients don't. The four gull marks are the print's one small element, and they stay legible because there are just four of them, spaced apart, not packed into a flock.

How do I get one made?

Describe the boat at JustOG — the hull, the derrick angle, and whether the birds stay or go. Pick a direction, drag the crop frame, see it composited on the real garment, and it's made to order and shipped.

Designs other people have published are in the shop.

Wide when working, narrow when steaming home. The shirt shows the wide half, and stops there.