Above A public domain photograph of the USS
Constitution in 1919. The informative, lengthy text below is a letter submitted by a Boston-area ship model maker and ship historian named
Edwin E. Ottie. It was featured as part of a column titled "As the World Wags" by
Philip Hale, as published in
The Boston Herald, May 19, 1928, p. 18. It may be one of the better accounts of
ship camouflage at the end of the 18th century—
PAINTED FOR BATTLERecently there has been some discussion in The Boston Herald of the original color scheme of the frigate Constitution, now undergoing restoration at the Charlestown navy yard.
At her launch In 1797 the Constitution was probably painted in the mode then practically universal for ships-of-war of all classes in the navies of England, France and the United States. The bulwarks inside and the inboard works, such as ladders, capstans, etc., were painted red or vermilion. Outside the hulls were coppered to the waterline. At or just above the waterline were the “wales,” a strake of extra-heavy planking running the length of the vessel. To preserve them they were daubed with a mixture of lamp-black and tar, which gave the effect of black paint. Above the wales and in the line of the ports, the ship's sides were left unpainted, or scraped bright and then covered or varnished with a composition of turpentine, linseed oil and yellow ochre, which produced the effect of a broad yellow streak or band. Above this streak to the rail the sides were either black, red or blue, sometimes decorated. The ships of this time generally carried elaborate figureheads with much carving and gilt-work about the bows, and equally elaborate and highly-decorated stern and quarter-galleries.
This was the general style, but there were many variations from it, up to Nelson's time there being no uniform rule for painting ships. At the Nile In 1798 the sides of the British ships varied from light yellow to dark yellow, some of them with horizontal black stripes between the tiers of ports. The Zealous had broad red sides with a black streak between the upper and lower deck ports. The Theseus had light yellow sides with a black streak between the upper and lower deck ports and hammock cloths yellow with ports painted on them to resemble three-decker. Even then, camouflage and deception were practised to some slight extent.
In their painting the French ships seem to have been almost indistinguishable from the English, as their sides also ran from light yellow to dark yellow, while several of them, like the English, had red sides. Le Genereux had dark red sides, Le Timoleon very dark red sides and L'Aquilon red sides with a black streak between the upper and lower deck ports.
To avoid the obvious confusion Nelson ordered all the ships of his fleet to be painted alike. He was the first to insist on this practice, ships In his fleet being given black hulls with yellow streaks along the line of the gunports and black portlids. As the ships were chequersided, this system of painting was called "double-yellow" or "chequer painting"; it was also called the "Nelson stripe,” or [Nelson] mode.
The French painted their masthoops black; as a further distinguishing mark Nelson had his masthoops painted white.
After Trafalgar the yellow streaks in the line of the gunports gradually merged into white, thus giving the black-and-white effect of the old "wooden walls."
By 1812 the Constitution probably had a broad white stripe along the line of her main-deck battery. Colored reproductions of two of Pocock's engravings of the action of the Constitution and the Java (Dec. 29, 1812) show both vessels with white streaks along the line of the lower deck guns.
Camouflage on the whole was but little known and less resorted to in Nelson's time. Cannon-range was very short; ships fought at a hundred yards distance or less, and half the time commanders depended on boarding and carrying the other vessel by sheer weight of muscle and hand-to-hand fighting with cutlass and boarding-pike to win the day. In this, the British had a peculiar advantage over their traditional enemies the French, as the French seamen being not infrequently undernourished and sickly stood little chance against the brawny English jack-tars. This led the English to neglect their marksmanship with the great guns and in 1812 the Americans, through superior gunnery and seamanship, repeatedly defeated them at sea.
Ships as a rule fought in a huddle, their yard-arms locked, sometimes so close aboard each other that the supports could not be triced up and the guns run out. So on the first volley the gun-crews fired through their own port-lids and blew them away, and ran their swabbers and rammers into the enemy's ports to load their guns after the discharges; they fought stripped to the buff, sometimes bare-footed, with buckets of rum by the train-tackles of each gun, their pig-tails whipping about their shoulders as they loaded, aimed and ran out the long eighteen or twenty-four-pounders on their cumbersome wooden carriages. Under the pull of the tackles and the roll of the ship the guns brought up with a crash against the oaken sides, and when fired the recoil drove them back into position for re-loading and firing again.
Seamen wore their hair long in those days and elaborate accounts are to be found in old books for powdering, greasing and braiding pigtails, in which they took great pride. Sometimes the pig-tails were encased in snake-skin or oiled silk; prime seamen were known by the first class condition of their pig-tails.
Engagements between single ships sometimes were conducted with all the ceremony and punctilio that marked duels ashore between gentlemen or officers of the two services.
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
