More on WWI camoufleur Frederick Alexander Pawla

At the end of May 2019, we posted a lengthy article on British-born artist Frederick Alexander Pawla (1876-1964), who was in charge of the US Army’s Embarkation Service during World War I. In that capacity, he oversaw the camouflage of “many of the army transports, particularly cargo carriers.”

More recently, we have found out more about Pawla. Specifically, we have located a series of photographs that document the process of applying a dazzle camouflage pattern that (most likely) Pawla was the designer of. The name of the ship was the USS City of Atlanta. It is shown above, with its camouflage in process of being applied.

As is evident in the photograph, the design makes use of a traditional artist’s illusion. The camoufleur has inserted a sharp white upright line on the starboard side of the bow, which will make it appear from a distance that the ship is headed at an angle to the right. He has strengthened that illusion by painting a trompe l’oeil (“fool the eye”) anchor to the left of that white line, then aligning it with an actual anchor on the right. A second actual anchor, which can be seen faintly from an angle on the port side of the bow, was probably painted to disappear, to blend in with that side of the ship.

The process of painting the ship is documented by a series of three photographs, two of which show the camouflage artists in the process of applying the dazzle designs on an upper section of the ship (identified in government records as the City of Atlanta). Earlier in the process, a camouflage artist had used chalk to mark out the color boundaries, while also using symbols to indicate which paint colors to apply (K designates Black, W indicates White) in which areas.

In the first photograph in this series, two men are strengthening those chalk boundaries, using white paint. In the second photograph, white paint is in process of being applied to an area that was labeled W. In the third photograph, one can see the finished result, with the black (K) and white (W) areas having been filled in, as has another color area (designated as 11) that cuts across the window, which is painted black.

Two clarifications should be noted: (1) We can see the light/dark value of color that cuts across the window, but the color itself is not identifiable. This is because this is an AI digitally-colorized version of a grayscale photograph (there are no color photographs of WWI ship camouflage), and current AI colorization cannot yet determine the hue that was actually used on the ship.

(2) Notice also that the camouflage pattern does not extend onto the floor of the deck. In WWI ship camouflage, it was considered unnecessary to apply the pattern to the deck because the design was addressed to the low-level viewing angle of a U-boat periscope. From that position, the deck surface was not visible. In contrast, during World War II, disruptive camouflage patterns were applied to the deck surfaces of ships, because other viewing angles (such as aerial views) had to be addressed as well. For more on this, see Disruption Versus Dazzle (online access).

The last of the five US government photographs included on this blogpost shows two American camoufleurs (the Army officer on the left may be Frederick Pawla), standing beside a dazzle-camouflaged ship (identified in the caption as the City of Atlanta), looking at a diagram for a ship camouflage plan, and most likely discussing the progress.

Your Stern Is Where Your Head Should Be

Directional distortion plan (1918)

Above Anon, detail of a colored drawing of a World War I dazzle ship camouflage plan in the collection of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). In the original, there is a hand-printed caption that reads "example showing 'direction' of ship reversed." There is also a smaller notation that reads "SRNR 1918" or "SRHR 1918," which may be the originator's signature, or perhaps the "NR" means Naval Reserves. In the drawing, the front of the ship (the bow) is on the left, but it has been painted to look like the rear (the stern). The actual stern (on the right) has been painted to look like the bow. From a distant view through a periscope, an observer might conclude that the ship is heading toward the right, when in fact the opposite is true. At the bottom of this web page is a related drawing (artist unknown) that accompanied a magazine article by Lloyd Seaman titled "Masterpieces of Navy Camouflage" in Popular Mechanics magazine Vol 31, 1919, pp. 217-219.

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Anon in "Admiralty's Humor" in the Breckenridge News (Cloverport KY), May 14, 1919, p. 7—

An old sea captain wrote to the [British Admiralty] complaining, more in sorrow than in anger, of the way in which the ship had been dazzle-painted: "First, you make me look like a parrot, and then you make me look like a haystack, and I don't want to look like either." He got back the official reply:

"We don't want you to look like either a parrot or a haystack, but we do want you to look as if your stern was where your head ought to be."

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Mingo White, a former Alabama slave, from an interview by Levi D. Shelby Jr. in 1937, as part of the Federal Writers Project, now in the US Library of Congress—

[Confederacy President] Jeff[erson] Davis was as smart a man as you ever want to see. During the [American Civil] war he sheared his horse in such a way that he looked like he was going one way when he'd be going the other.

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A. Russell Bond in "Warriors of the Paint-Brush" in St. Nicholas magazine Vol XLVI (November 1918-April 1919), pp. 499-505—

Early in the submarine campaign, one of our [US merchant] boats was given a coat of camouflage, and when the vessel sailed from its pier in the North River, New York, its owners sent a photographer two or three piers down the river to photograph the ship as she went by. He took the pictures, but when the negative was developed, he found, much to his astonishment, that the boat was not all on the plate. In the finder of his camera, he had mistaken a heavy band of black paint as the stern of the ship, quite overlooking the real stern, which was painted a grayish white. The [camouflage] artist had fooled the photographer, and at a distance of not more than two or three hundred yards!

Distortion of bow, stern and smoke stacks (1919)

additional sources

Camouflage Artist | W.W. Henderson

W.W. Henderson (c1918), ship camouflage

Above Colored drawing of a dazzle ship camouflage plan (c1918), signed W.W. Henderson, now in the collection of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).

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At the moment, we know very little about a New England-based artist named W.W. Henderson (dates unknown), who served as an American ship camouflage artist during World War I. He is not to be confused with William Penhallow Henderson (1877-1943), who was also a ship camoufleur (in San Francisco). Information about W.W. Henderson was published in the Lewiston Evening Journal (Lewiston ME) on November 22, 1924, in an article on the School of Fine Arts of the Portland (ME) Society of Art, now known as the Maine College of Art. The portion pertaining to Henderson reads—

In the fall of 1922, W.W. Henderson accepted the position as head of the design department. This department under his guidance has become very strong. Its students receive a thorough training and are fitted to fill positions as professional or commercial illustrators.

Mr. Henderson came to Portland from Newport RI, where he had a studio. He was a pupil of Eric Pape [proprietor of the Eric Pape School of Art, Boston] and is a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design and also studied with Henry Hunt Clark of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

After completing his studies he was connected as a designer with one of the largest ecclesiastical houses in the country. He has also done much work in interior decorating screens for houses and stores. During the war he was in the camouflage department of the Navy because of his knowledge of color.

Camouflage Artist | Barry Faulkner

New Hampshire muralist and camoufleur Barry Faulkner

In a number of earlier posts, we've talked about New Hampshire muralist Barry Faulkner (1881-1966) and the extent of his involvement (along with sculptor Sherry Edmundson Fry (1879-1966)) in organizing artists to serve in the American Camouflage Corps during World War I. Faulkner later talked about his wartime experiences in his autobiography, Sketches From An Artist's Life (Dublin NH,: William Bauhan, 1973), in which was also reproduced the above photograph.

Earlier this year, a substantial article by historian E. Malcolm Parkinson (associate professor emeritus of history at Worchester Polytechnic Institute) was featured in Prologue, a publication of the US National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), Vol 44 No 1 (Spring 2012). In the article, titled "The Artist at War: Painters, Muralist, Sculptors, Architects Worked to Provide Camouflage for Troops in World War I," Parkinson notes that while Faulkner is remembered for his commissioned murals—including two large paintings in the Rotunda of the National Archives Building (as shown below)—few people are aware of his role in the army. The entire article can now be accessed online. more>>

Faulkner's murals in the Rotunda of the National Archives Building