by John Maxtone-Graham
T
o counter today's brush-fire wars, fleets of capacio us H ercules transports loft fi ghting men to distant trouble spots around the globe. But for yesterday's conflag rati o ns, troo ps were dispatched overseas aboard ocean liners coopted for the d uration. A hard-and-fast proviso di ctated the relationship ofBritain' s Admiralty and Britain 's m erchant fleet: In the event of war, peacetime tonnage wo uld be dragooned on the instant, tran sformed into armed m erchant cruisers (an abys mal mistake) , troop transpo rts or hospital ships. Throughout both world wars, ocean liners might be encountered almost anywhere, steaming in solitary urgency or m assed in protective convoy-elusive, blacked-out and cloaked in secrecy. Symptomatic of the way war affected ocean liners in the summer of 19 14, when war fin ally cam e to Europe after the century of the Pax Britannica, was the immediacy w ith which hostilities disrupted both their dispatch and passage. Out on the Atlantic, even before hostilities had been fo rmally declared, liners in sudden jeopardy scuttled hurriedly fo r either fri endly or neutral ports. Peacetime passengers were und erstandably distressed that transAtlantic voyaging was no mo re. T he ocean liners' bright superstru ctures, gaily-painted funnels, gleam ing black hulls and lavish interiors no longer graced M anhattan's piers. They were gone, conscripted fo r gove rnment service, shipboard's myriad delights obliterated for the duration by wartime motley. Altho ugh Lusitania's sinking has often been credited with drawing America into the war, the U nited States did not enter hostilities fo r nearly two more years. In fact, the torpedoing of Laconia on 25 February 19 17, with a further loss of American lives, had a somehow more compelling effect on American popular opinion. Congress declared war o n 6 April 191 7. One of the government's first wartime acts was to se ize the half mi llion tons of intern ed Ge rm an shipping languishing at East Coast p iers. W ar in the Atlantic had reached a criti cal juncture. The growth and effi ciency of U- boats and the torpedoes that were their wea pons of choice dominared the head-
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lines. There were, it finally transpired, only two defenses against U-boats, the first cosmetic, the second strategic; the first regarded as more or less ineffectual, the second a remarkable achievement that reduced ship losses dras tically. Lieutenant No rman W ilkinson, RNVR, a distinguished m aritime artist, is popularly credited with devising dazzle painting ¡ for m erchant ships. O ther artists and academics h ad earli er approached Their Lordship s w ith ca m o ufl age sch em es; but Wilkinson seem ed to have carried the day, form ally submitting his pro posal to the Admi ralty in April 19 17. T he alacri ty with which his proposal was accepted betrays the ominous increase in U-boat kills that year, dating fro m the February announcem ent by Germ any pledging unrestricted submarine warfare against all vessels. Wilkinson was pro mo ted to Lieutenant C omman der and put in charge of a team of fifteen British artists, conve ned in a Burlington H ouse offi ce, to study dazzle painting. Once perfected, individual artists were posted to va rio us po rts around the U nited Artist Donald Stoltenberg interprets the dramatic colors ofdazzle paint, on M auretania and other ocean liners, which were intended to confuse the U-boats hunting them. (Cof!ection ofthe artist)
Kingdom and, later, to America to implement the d esigns to full scale o n merch ant vessels. A m easure of W ilkinson 's success was the speed with which o ther Allied navies adopted dazzle painting as well. The point was less to conceal than mislead. Accustomed as we are to black and white pho tographs, it com es as so mething of a surprise to appreciate what vivid polychromy dazzle painting employed . Mauretania sported black and white harlequins, accentuated with brigh t reds, blues and greens. T he bizarre design covered the C unarder' s hull and superstructure, including life boats, b ridge and funn els. Painter Eric Longo has suggested that blues, yellows and reds might well, fro m a distance, have been optically blended into a dark green , ocean color. Wilkinson m andated several ground rules for d azzle painting. T hough horizo ntal or verti cal lines should be eschewed , disruptive arrangem ents of whorls, slas hes, swoops and arcs were encou raged, extending from boo t-topping to funnel rims. It was rem arkable how funn els painted in a lighter sh ade than their darker neighbors seemingly vanished . Moreover, the scale of pattern must suit the acreage of the vessel's flank. And fin ally, to fo restall Ge rman commanders from becoming too familiar with certain dazzle schem es, port and starboard sides were som etimes painted differently; occasionally the entire canvas, so to speak, was co mpl etely redesigned. In sum, dazzle painting was a visual deception des igned specifically to confuse and mislead submarine commanders. Their periscope vantage point, just above the ocean 's surface, m eant that assessing an Alli ed vessel's p rofile-often a target of h asty oppo rtunity-was of prime importance. Breaking it up, changing the silhouette, distorting the apparent course, size and, indeed, the very nat ure of the vessel, supposedly wo rked to the merchant captain' s-and his involuntary passengers'advantage. Perhaps the most ingenious painted ship device, wo rth more than any number .of fa nciful curlicues, was the sil ho uette â&#x20AC;˘Of a mythic acco mpanying destroyer p<ainted along the side of the American troow er Antigone.
SEA. HISTORY 98, AUTUMN 2001