informative new online dazzle camouflage source links

Beginning in 2018, we published four major essays on aspects of World War I ship camouflage. Shown here are the covers (above) and examples of pages (below on this post) as they were prepared for production as printed booklets (not as facing page spreads). Only a small number of these were printed, but they are now available to read online and/or to download in pdf format. The booklets and their online links are as follows—

Chicanery and Conspicuousness: Social Repercussions of World War I Ship Camouflage (2018).
Under the Big Top at Sims’ Circus: Ship Camouflage Behind the Scenes in World War One (2018).
Disruption Versus Dazzle: Prevalent Misunderstandings about World War I Ship Camouflage (2018).
Optical Science Meets Visual Art: The Camouflage Experiments of William Andrew Mackay (2019).

Signed first editions of our three earlier books on the subject are available as a bundle at substantially discounted prices (with free shipping) on Ebay.

An on-going series of new videos on the subject, such as Dazzle Camouflage: What is it and how did it work?, can be viewed on our YouTube Channel, available here.

Courtney Allen / Illustrator, Performer and Camoufleur

Courtney Allen

There was an American illustrator and performer named Courtney (Charles) Allen (1896-1969), who was also a camouflage artist.  He was an interesting character, and he surely deserves recognition. Below is information I found some time ago, which I subsequently shared with askART.

When the US entered World War I in 1917, he was working as an artist for the Wilmington Star and the Washington Times. He joined the US Army and served in France as a camouflage artist. A front page article in the Washington Times in 1919 states that 37 officers and 445 camouflage artists have returned to Washington barracks after ten months of overseas service.

Among the returning camoufleurs, the article states, was Sergeant Courtney C. Allen, “former artist for The Times,” as well as five other artists from Washington DC, including Captain E.R. Keane, Private David Rubin, Private James Allen, Private George Park, and Private James O’Shea. Four of the five were pictured in a group photograph in the same issue, titled “Four Washington ‘Camoufleurs,’ Just Back.” The news photograph (including the headshot of Allen below) has not stood the test of time.

Courtney Allen (1919)

“Sergeant Allen,” the article continues, “was in the fighting at Chateau-Thierry, Soissons, Saint-Mihiel, and at other points along the American line. ‘At Chateau-Thierry we did our best work,’ he said to a Times reporter.”

It may also be surprising to learn that Courtney Allen was also a wildly popular stage musician and comic performer. While studying at Charles Hawthorne’s Cape Cod school, he and five other artists (“all veterans of the World War”) established a popular Provincetown MA coffee house, on Lewis Wharf, called the “Sixes and Sevens,” in which they functioned as the cooks, waiters and entertainers. An article and photograph of the “Big Six” players were published in the Boston Globe in 1920.

In that news feature, Courtney Allen is singled out as especially popular with the crowd. He is, states the article, “variously known among the crowd as ‘Cootie’ Allen and ‘Cuskoo.’” He “is a clever performer with the ukulele and the steel guitar and is kept very busy when the coffee house is crowded—as it has been every evening since it opened.” The raucous new business was seen as a successor to the famous Provincetown Players, who had moved to McDougal Street in Greenwich Village by then.

In August 1921, Allen is mentioned in a Boston Post article as having been a great success at the annual Provincetown Costume Ball. Dressed as “a Japanese coolie,” he received an honorable mention in the costume judging. The Second Prize was awarded to artist Lawrence W. Grant (dressed as a “snake charmer”), who had also served as an Army camouflage artist in France.

For most of his life, he appears to have made his living as a magazine and newspaper illustrator, as in the example shown at the top of this blog post.

Sources

“Camouflage Men Come to Capital” in Washington Times. January 31, 1919, p. 1.

“Costume Ball Like Fairyland” in Boston Post. August 6, 1921.

“Courtney Allen” in Who Was Who in American Art.

Paul Stanwood, “Provincetown Finds Fun at the ‘Sixes and Sevens’ Coffee House” in Boston Globe. July 18, 1920.

a strange, weird-looking, motley camouflaged convoy

Above SS Mona's Queen, a paddle steamer (wearing a dazzle camouflage scheme) at Weymouth, Dorset, UK, c1918 (not one of the ships described in the news report below). Public domain, colorized.

•••

Cruise with a Destroyer Escort, in La Gazette de Hollande, April 13, 1918—

We were in the harbor of a famous Southern port on board the leader of a destroyer flotilla ready to start on one of its ordinary cruises as escort to merchant convoys. It was a cold, bleak, stormy day, with a fine cross sea running in the Channel. One after the other the members of the flotilla cast off from the buoys, and slipped silently seaword. In the outer harbor were the huge merchantmen we were to escort into the comparative safety of the broad Atlantic. They were a strange, motley-looking crowd, with a camouflage appearance of the weirdest description, calculated to send Futurist artists into ecstasies. These weird-looking vessels followed the destroyers in single file out of harbor at slow speed until well out into the Channel. There they were formed up and made into as compact a crowd as possible. A destroyer in front and others on each flank constituted a protective screen. After we had got well out and had lined up our escort full speed ahead was ordered, but that was full speed for the convoy only. The destroyers were at about halfspeed, and this was partly expended in zig-zagging. To and fro, without a moment’s respite, the leader proceeded in front of the convoy, always about 500 to 600 yards ahead, as though showing to timid followers that it was perfectly safe to follow where we led. On the flanks other destroyers kept up the same zig-zag procedure, and astern yet another zigged and zagged and did her best to keep the rearmost ships up to the full convoy speed.

Arcimboldo, Grandville and William Charles Morris

William Charles Morris

Aha, I have recently run across the work of an American political cartoonist named William Charles Morris (1874-1940). I don’t know if he had any interest or involvement in camouflage per se, but there are examples of his work in which he used visual puns, visual metamorphosis (in the manner of Grandville), and spelled out words with figures.

Given the era he lived in, one of his favorite subjects was US President Theodore Roosevelt. TR had squinty eyes, an arched moustache, and prominent teeth, and Morris made a portrait of him (as he was seeking a third term in office) in which his face becomes the White House, his teeth having “evolved” into pillars. In a cartoon titled “Rabbit Hunting,” the slogan SQUARE DEAL is spelled out by rabbits in the background. 

Rabbit Hunting

Morris also made a drawing, titled “Hi$ Late$t Picture: The Northwe$tern Farmer,” in which he used shape substitutions and visual puns, like those of Arcimboldo.

To my mind, Morris was at his finest when he created a pun-laden portrait of railroad executive E.H. Harriman (as shown above), titled “The Colossus of ‘Roads.’” From our earlier years, we clearly remember Harriman’s son, New York statesman Averell Harriman.

See also the well-known “living photographs” of Arthur Mole and John Thomas at, and a short film discussion of embedded figures.

Prosperity Personified