For years I’ve been trying to find out about an American artist, author and book illustrator named
John Downes Whiting (1884-1977). I’ve been looking for information about his activities as a ship camouflage designer during World War I. One complication is that he is often cited as
John D. Whiting, so it’s easy to confuse him with another person named
John David Whiting (1882-1951), who belonged to a religious sect in Jerusalem called
The American Colony.
In contrast, John Downes Whiting (known as
Jack Whiting) was, as he described himself, a “Connecticut Yankee” and a graduate of the Yale School of Fine Arts (BFA 1915). Born in Ridgefield CT, he was named after his uncle,
John Ireland Howe Downes (1861-1933), who was also an artist, a Yale graduate, and the librarian for the art school there for 23 years.
As an artist, Jack Whiting’s own profession was that of a book and magazine illustrator, but he wrote books as well. In 1920, he published
Practical Illustration: A Guide for Artists (see cover above), and in 1928, he wrote and illustrated a semi-fictionalized account of his experience during WWI, titled
Convoy: A Story of the War at Sea.
On his draft registration form, dated September 5, 1918, he lists his occupation as a “camoufleur” with the
US Shipping Board, at 345 East 33rd Street in New York. That is the street address of the studio of a prominent muralist and interior designer named
William Andrew Mackay, whom I’ve been writing about for years. We have blogged about Mackay’s contribution to ship camouflage, and have also
published an essay on Mackay, his ship camouflage proposals, and his school for camoufleurs, headquartered at his studio, which he called the
Mackay School of Camouflage.
According to biographical entries, Whiting joined the Connecticut National Guard in 1917, where he served in Company F of the 2nd Regiment for one year. From June through December of 1918, he was affiliated with Mackay’s team of camouflage artists, who were assigned to develop so-called “dazzle camouflage” schemes for US merchant ships. They were not strictly a part of the US Navy, but were affiliated with the civilian Shipping Board, which was responsible for applying the schemes to merchant ships in the harbors.
As Mackay himself described it, it was at his Manhattan studio—
that the first work of camouflage was developed. In all, 749 vessels were camouflaged, and sixty men, artists, architects and designers, made this shop their headquarters, under direction of the United States Shipping Board, working over designs, testing colors, peering through the periscope at the wooden models, and then dashing off to try out some few effect on the vessels that, in a few days, would be depending upon our skill in the art of disguise to save them from the U-boats.
I have a list of the names of sixty-four (not sixty) of Mackay’s camouflage school affiliates. All this is more or less confirmed by a review of John Downes Whiting’s book on
Practical Illustration that appeared in
The Daily Northwestern (Evanston IL) on January 22, 1921, p. 7. The book’s author, the reviewer states—
…served in the camouflage department of the navy during the war. One of Mr. Whiting’s assignments was to find out just what lines and colors did in reducing the visibility of ships. The results of his experiments, conducted at sea and on the coast, formed the basis of many of the weird but efficacious desgns which camouflaged our transports. William Andrew Mackay, the mural painter, with whom Mr. Whiting worked for the navy, says that Whiting’s book is written in the same thorough manner in which the author tackled his war work.In 1928, when Whiting wrote a semi-fictionalized account of his wartime experience in
Convoy: A Story of the War at Sea, it included an entire chapter about Mackay and his camouflage school. It also features a pen-and-ink drawing by Whiting (reproduced above) of a ship camoufleur looking at a camouflaged ship model in a testing theatre. In a different later source (from a 1932 issue of
The Literary Digest), Whiting states that during the war he designed “camouflage for Army transports and supply ships.” In that case, it seems likely that he also worked with
Frederick A. Pawla (1876-1964), who, as the head camouflage for the
AEF Embarkation Service, oversaw the camouflage of “many of the army transports, particularly cargo carriers.” We have previously blogged about Pawla
here and
here.
On page 242 of Whiting’s book titled
Convoy, there is an offhand reference to ship camouflage which may be relevant, or maybe not. The sentence reads: “The Monodoc, looking, in her camouflage, like an intoxicated snake, lay at anchor in the river.” The book’s text, as mentioned earlier is a book of fiction, based on fact. So perhaps we shouldn’t surprised that there doesn’t seem to have been a WWI American ship named Monodoc (altought there were ships named Monadnock). Maybe he simply invented the name.
In the same book, on page 80, Whiting provides some insight into an on-going conflict between Mackay’s camouflage team (affilidated with the US Shipping Board) and the US Navy’s own official
Camouflage Section, which had been given the authority to originate all ship camouflage schemes, both Navy and civilian, which was greatly resented by those who were loyal to Mackay.
As Whiting alludes to in his book, Mackay’s camouflage school may not have been unauthorized by the Navy, and was thus conducted “quietly.” But, as he also implies, Mackay’s men also side-stepped strict compliance with the Navy’s regulations by claiming that the schemes that they were given required alteration to make them fit the vessels they were required to apply them to.
Here is the dialogue from Whiting’s book—
“I thought these [ship camouflage] designs were made in Washington, under the Navy Department.”
“Yep, that’s the theory. Those Johnnies think we only put their patterns on the steamers, but, b-bless you, the plans we get from there only fit half the shapes in this town. We have to camouflage every darned thing from a tanker to a barge.”
“And so your chief [William Andrew Mackay] is quietly evolving his own school for camoufleurs?”
“That’s it. The queerist lot of wights are working here, scraped up from the corners of Bohemia. But they work; Mackay is a hustler.”
“Drives you, does he?”
“No, he innoculates us; he has more ideas than all your admirals put together. And the boys are simply nuts about him.”
A small selection of other illustrations by Whiting, including book covers and an interior illustrations, are also featured in this post.
RELATED LINKS
Dazzle Camouflage: What is it and how did it work? / Nature, Art, and Camouflage / Art, Women's Rights, and Camouflage / Embedded Figures, Art, and Camouflage / Art, Gestalt, and Camouflage / Optical science meets visual art / Disruption versus dazzle / Chicanery and conspicuousness / Under the big top at Sims' circus
