Camouflage Artist \ Theatre Designer Victor H. Martin

Above World War I US Army camoufleurs applying chalk lines to military equipment in advance of painting camouflage.

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So here’s another puzzling find. In its official activities report in 1920,  the Free Public Library of Elizabeth NJ included the following statement—

An interesting exhibition of Naval Camouflage work of the US Shipping Board was held in the library, October 5th to 8th [1920]. The models, perfect replicas of actual vessels, about twenty-five in number including a submarine, were prepared by Mr. Victor Martin of Elizabeth, who, with a large number of assistants during the War [WWI] was entrusted with the duty of camouflaging great numbers of mercantile vessels. Several of the models were examples of the Martin School of Camouflage marking, while others exhibited the French and English types. The periscope, theatre, and mechanism were made and set up by Captains Bickel and Grauss of our Elizabeth Fire Department and the entire exhibit was a very finished one.

Marking out color areas with chalk lines

Born in New York in 1877, Victor H. Martin appears to have worked as a scenic artist (theatre designer) in the years prior to WWI, with a studio at 145 East 56th Street in New York. During the war, he contributed to the camouflage of merchant ships, apparently as a civilian under William Andrew Mackay, head of the Second District of the US Shipping Board. His name appears on a 1918 listing of sixty-four camoufleurs who were associated with Mackay. After the war, he returned to theatrical design, for which he joined the Pauline MacLean Stock Company at Celeron Park in Jamestown NY for the summer of 1919. He taught commercial art (graphic design) at the Baron de Hirsch Trade School* in New York until his retirement in 1941. He died on June 23, 1944, in Elizabeth NJ.

Ship with incomplete camouflage, showing chalk lines

The library’s account of his wartime responsibilities is confusing. We have not found any other mention of a “Martin School of Camouflage,” but there are numerous claims about Mackay having founded a camouflage school. Equally bewildering is the use of the term “camouflage marking” instead of “camouflage painting.” It’s puzzling because it could refer to the use of chalk lines to “mark out” color zones on the surface of the ship in advance of the actual painting. Over the years, we have discovered text references to this method of “marking out” color boundaries as well as various photographs of chalk lines being applied to ships, tanks, and other vehicles. Some of these accounts have been posted on this blog.

USS Gretavale with chalk lines, in process of being painted

* The Baron de Hirsch Trade School (on East 64th Street in Manhattan) was set up in 1891 for the purpose providing free vocational training for Jewish men, especially to immigrants from Russia and Romania. It is of peripheral interest that this is the school attended by two of the Three Stooges, the brothers Shemp and Moe Howard. Shemp studied plumbing and Moe was an electrician, but they abandoned those ambitions to become vaudeville entertainers in 1922.