ship from which Hart Crane committed suicide / 1932

USS Orizaba

The American Modernist poet, Hart Crane, took his own life at age 32, by jumping from a ship into the Gulf of Mexico while en route to New York in 1932. 

Shown here are two views of the ship that he was traveling on, the USS Orizaba. At the time, however, it would not have been camouflaged. These are photographs from World War I (c1918), at which time it had been painted in a multi-colored “dazzle camouflage” scheme. As is evident, the camouflage patterns on the ship’s two sides are substantially different, as was standard wartime practice. The top image shows the port side, while the other shows the starboard.

USS Orizaba

As noted by art historian Henry Adams in The Golden Age of Cleveland Art: 1900 to 1945 (Cleveland OH: Cleveland History Center, 2022), Crane grew up in northeastern Ohio, where his father was a restaurant owner and candy manufacturer. In view of Crane’s suicide, it is a darkly comic irony that his father was the inventor of the candy known as the Life Saver.

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

the face of dread / when deception is too much to bear

Above Agricultural Instruments of Human Sustenance [a visual pun]. Historic engraving detail.

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Maurice Browne, Too Late to Lament: An Autobiography. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1956, p. 30—

Mr. Pickford was one of the finest Sanskrit scholars of his day. He was very poor; he had sacrificed his life to Sanskrit and his sister. His sister kept house for him in a little village where he was rector, a few miles outside Ipswich; a dour, bitter, selfish woman whom no one liked. So, for his sister's sake, he had put aside marriage, advancement, happiness, and had taken that obscure living in a poky village in a backward county, to make her a home where were few to hate her.

One day a letter came addressed to Mr. Pickford. Through several weeks he had been hoping for it; if it came, it might offer him an academic position where he could carry to fruition his life's work in Sanskrit. Every morning his sister went downstairs to meet the postman and see whether the letter had come: “No, John, it has not come today; perhaps it will come tomorrow.”

Long afterwards the Vice-Chancellor in whose gift that position lay, meeting Mr. Pickford accidentally in the streets of Ipswich, greeted him coldly: “I considered it discourteous of you not even to have acknowledged the offer which I made you.” Mr. Pickford made no comment. But, when he got back to the ugly, lonely, village rectory, he spoke to his sister. “Yes,” she said defiantly, “of course the letter  came; I read and burned it. I’m very happy where I am, and you’re much better off in a place suited to you.”

A little later Horrid Old Pickford killed himself. My father preached his funeral sermon. There was no mention of, no hint of reference to, that story in it; but the Stoic view of self-murder was upheld by the Anglican preacher.

NOTE There is a short video that pertains to visual puns as embedded figures at this online link.

suicide of WWI illustrator and ship camouflage artist

Cover design by Arthur Hutchins (1912)

As a civilian working for the Emergency Fleet Corporation during World War I, Boston illustrator Arthur Hutchins was assigned to camouflaging merchant ships. He was already well-known as an illustrator for books and magazines. Among his finest works were the cover and interior illustrations (1912) for the first book authored by American writer Sinclair Lewis (see cover above), who used the pseudonym Tom Graham.

As documented in the newspaper extracts below, Hutchins began to design wartime recruiting posters in 1917, and was assigned to ship camouflage in early 1918. All this was coincident with the Spanish flu pandemic, and apparently he was twice stricken by it, and never quite recovered. As described in the last of the three articles below, he took his own life in late March 1919.

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POSTERS TO WIN RECRUITS: Artists-Designers’ League Completes Several in Boston Sunday Post, May 6, 1917, p. 24—

Members of the Artists-Designers’ League have prepared several large posters calling upon ypung men to enlist in the navy. These will soon be placed in conspicuous locations in the city. The posters “speak” to the citizen through their inscriptions, designs and combinations of colors.

While three men prepared the designs, nearly a score of members of the league aided in the painting. The posters are five by seven feet and are stretched on wooden frames.

One poster, which was designed by Arthur Hutchins, is inscribed “The Navy is Your Opportunity. Be a Man and Man the Navy.” The design shows a battleship and a destroyer under full steam. The background is blue…

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BOSTON MAN IS WINNER OF POSTER PRIZE in Boston Evening Record, August 16, 1918—

Arthur Hutchins of Boston, connected with the Camouflage Department of the Emergency Fleet Corporation, won the first prize for shipyard and allied industrial works in the recent ship poster competition by the National Service Section of the United States Shipping Board.

In the competiton there were classes for artists and students, sailors and soldiers, shipyard and industrial workers, and school children.

Mr. Hutchins, whose poster was entitled “On the Firing Line,” was awarded the first prize by the decision of several competent judges. The artist, who has exceptional natural talent, chose for his subject a typical shipyard scene, showing two riveteers hard at work on the hull of a steel ship. The technqiue of the drawing is only surpassed by the deep feeling which it embodies. It is a subtle message of appeciation to the hardworking shipbuilder, who will look upon it often in his daily coming and going from the shipyard where these posters are to be placed. It is a man’s recognition of what his fellowmen are doing in the great fight. It cannot but bring encouragement to those sturdy laborers who inspired it.

The artistic ability of Mr. Hutchins covers large fields. He has made art his business for many years and has contributed much to the books and magazines of this country. He studied at the Boston School of the Museum of Fine Arts.…

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MARINE PAINTER TAKES HIS OWN LIFE: Arthur Hutchins Overworked for Government Camouflaging Vessels, in the Boston Herald, March 27, 1919, p. 7—

Arthur Hutchins, well-known painter of marine subjects who directed the work of camouflaging government vessels in this district for more than a year of the war, was found dead yesterday with a revolver bullet wound in his head at his studio, 252 Dorchester Avenue, Dorchester. The police stated that he undoubtedly ended his own life, as he had been suffering recently frm the effects of two attacks of influenza and from the arduous labor he performed for the government.

He worked unceasingly in the camouflaging of ships, and his nervous system became affected. After receiving his discharge from the service a few months ago, he visited Provincetown and New Hampshire in search of health, and on Monday evening he left home, Vassal Street, Wollaston, leaving the impression that he was again going to New Hampshire. After his departure his wife discovered that a revolver was missing from the house.

Yesterday his body was discovered on a couch in the studio, with the revolver lying near. The police believe he has been dead since Monday night.

He was born in Maine thirty-two years ago. His artistic productions have been frequently reproduced in the National Magazine and the National Sportsman, and he won a government prize for a Liberty poster design during the war. Surviving him besides his widow, are two children.

See also <https://youtu.be/2NJcvEmEg_o>