Devonshire February March 17

their base to patrol the Western
Approaches and the English
Channel to keep our merchant
shipping safe.
Lusitania’s sister ships, the Mauritania
and the Aquitania had now
become troop ships and were
ferrying men and supplies to and
from the various theatres of war.
Wilkinson knew their lines intimately
and began to make black
and white sketches of these ships
and others, from memory.
Because of the war threat he knew
that the Lusitania’s four great distinguishing
red and black funnels
had been over-painted black but
this time as he began his sketch
he left three of the funnels white:
the fourth he drew with a black
diagonal that continued down the
side of the vessel as a wide black
bar, ending at the waterline.
Then he opened his watercolour
box and began to sketch again,
this time in colour. The resulting
drawings were extraordinary and
he sent them, with many others
depicting different sizes and kinds
of shipping, to the Admiralty in
London.
Here were the beginnings of what
would later become known as
‘Dazzle”: the marine camouflage
Wilkinson created in Devon, not
to hide a ship from view but to
distract and confuse a predatory
U-boat commander as he scanned
the horizon through his periscope
in search of his next kill. Dazzle
made it difficult in the extreme
to judge the speed, direction or
even the size or type of vessel he
had in his sites.
The Admiralty was immediately
impressed - Britain was losing
tens of thousands of tons of shipping
to U-boats - and sent a team
of high-ranking officers to Devon
to meet the man, discuss his ideas
and commission a full scale trial
by applying Dazzle to a warship
then in dry dock at Devonport.
Subsequent ‘full scale’ trials even
took into account how vessels
which plied a strictly coastal trade
might be dazzle camouflaged
against a background of land
rather than sea and these may
have been trialled along the south
coast of Devon between Plymouth
and Lyme.
Although he was a completely
traditional painter, working primarily
in oils and water colour,
Wilkinson’s dazzle designs in 1917
were considered to be part of
the revolutionary movement in
modern art, called Cubism.
Wilkinson’s artistic thinking had
indeed been influenced by Cubism
and the works of George Braque,
its founder, and later, Pablo
Picasso and his design submissions
to the Admiralty were considered
revolutionary.
Look hard enough and long
enough at George Braque’s cubist
painting Violin and Candlesticks
and they begin to take shape.
U-boat commanders on the other
hand seldom had the luxury of
time.
After his active service in the
Navy Wilkinson conceived and
organised the Dazzle Department
at the Royal Academy, inventing a
radical camouflage for the British
and allied fleets.
Colour photography had yet to
be invented but the dozens of
small, scale models of scores of
different Dazzle-painted kinds of
ship survive and can be viewed on
the web site of London’s Imperial
War Museum.
Largely abandoned after WW1,
Dazzle was thought to have
outlived its usefulness with the
advances in technology and
in particular the invention of
radar. But dazzle lived on to be
used extensively by the Allied
Air Forces and Armies. In 1939,
Wilkinson’s designs were modified
and he became Inspector of
Camouflage with the rank of Air
Commodore.
He was present at the invasion
of Normandy in 1944 where
he painted one of the invasion
beaches ‘live’ from the deck of
the destroyer HMS Jervis - which
came under heavy attack as he
painted.
He led a long, active and adventurous
life, was a keen yachtsman,
was a regular exhibitor at
the Royal Academy, president
of the Royal Institute of Painters
in Watercolours and was a
member of the Royal Institute of
Oil Painters.
His work can be found in many
public and private collections,
among the Imperial War Museum
and the National Maritime
Museum. He died in 1971.
Dazzle is used in many areas of
our lives to the present day, sometimes
for fun and at other times for
more practical or serious reasons
- because what goes round comes
round it seems to be making a
comeback
Morrison’s gigantic warehouse
at the side of the M5 in Somerset
for example leans towards
Wilkinson’s Dazzle theory in an
attempt to lighten its impact on
the West Country.
Quite why a leading NewYork
fashion house like Venus should
want to break up the silhouette
of a pretty girl using Dazzle is
puzzling although the result is
unquestionably stunning.
Who can say? Her identical sister
ship the RMS Aquitania, (top of
page opposite) launched in 1913
and given her specially designed
Dazzle camouflage in 1917, saw
military service in both world
wars as a troop ship. Dazzle transformed
her from ‘sitting duck’
to a ship that led a charmed life
throughout her many years of
active service.
She got her famous black and red
funnels back again after each of
the two wars and carried out her
duties as a luxurious Cunarder,
plying the Atlantic until her final
voyage in 1950. She is still known
in maritime circles as “The Most
Beautiful Ship in the World”.
JOHN FISHER
Wilkinson's 1915 sketch of the Lusitania for Illustrated London News
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