Ship Ahoy (2023) runs black and aqua horizontal lines across the plate, SHIP above AHOY below in large italic serif capitals — the letterforms dense with concentrated mark-making, the teal lines threading through and between the black to give the text a colour that sits somewhere between maritime signal and screen glow. The plate is lively, almost aggressive in its density, the letters substantially more present than the near-disappearance of Baby Jet or the pale interference of Zat So. SHIP AHOY is shouting through the noise.

The phrase is a hailing call — the greeting a sailor makes when sighting another vessel, or when calling across water to announce approach. It is from a register of American vernacular that has drifted far from its original context, absorbed into film dialogue, children's television, and casual speech until it retains the form of a maritime greeting without the function. Ruscha had been collecting exactly this kind of language since the 1960s — phrases that carry the ghost of a specific use while operating freely as pure expression — and Ship Ahoy, in the 2023 etching suite, sits alongside Zat So and This One as one of the more archaic and tonally distinctive choices in the group.

The aqua — printed in black and blue as part of the suite's two-colour approach — does something specific here that the other colour combinations in the series do not. It introduces the sea without depicting it, the teal lines carrying an association that the phrase activates. SHIP AHOY in black alone would be a graphic exercise; in black and aqua it becomes something with a horizon in it.

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