guyed, razooed and hifalutin / as full as a boiled owl

WWI "dazzle-painted" ship (unidentified)

Since posting our previous entry—on the use of the term razzle dazzle in reference to dazzle camouflage—we have found that inventor Thomas Edison made a motion picture of the amusement park ride we documented called "Razzle-Dazzle." It was filmed by cameraman A.C. Abadie at Wilmington Springs DE on June 30, 1903 (FLA3490), and is described as follows—

 The entire film was photographed from a position that permitted the camera to encompass a peculiar amusement concession named "Razzle Dazzle." It consists of a large circle suspended from cables, giving it the effect of a maypole. Children sit on it and the circle is revolved and undulated in the air.

•••

From this and other turn-of-the-century sources, it is evident that the term razzle dazzle was commonly-used English slang far in advance of World War I, when dazzle schemes were first employed for ship camouflage. For example, the following is a lengthy article (sorry, but it does have its moments) titled RAZZLE-DAZZLE: A Reporters’ Still Hunt After the Mysterious Phrase; Popular Ideas As to Its Full Scope and Meaning; Shall the Phrase Enrich the Columns of the Unabridged? from The Evening World (New York), March 1, 1889, p. 1—

The razzle-dazzle.

You hear of it everywhere. 

It is indoors and out of doors.

It is a persistent mystery and follows us with a mysterious persistency.

Evening World reporters, fired by a zeal worthy of the cause, set out on its track, determined to chase it out of its word-shadow form and, if it has a common meaning and an inclination to stay in the language, to hunt it into its proper place in the vocabulary.

These were the questions with which the city philologists were confronted wherever they were met this morning—

What, in your best judgment, is the meaning of the phrase “Razzle-Dazzle”?

Do you favor its permanent incorporation into the United States language?

There seemed to be a preponderance of affirmative opinion in answer to the second question.

Here are some of the replies, showing great diversity as to the interpretation of this new-born phrase:

Major Grant—I really do not know. It is a weird combination. It razzle-dazzles me to give an interpretation.

Judge Martine—If a person does not know what he is about he is razzle-dazzled. Lawyers frequently razzle-dazzle witnesses.

County Clerk Reilly—As there is no razzle-dazzling done in this office we don’t recognize such a phrase here. However, it is an expressive combination. If a man gets so tangled up that he does not know what he is doing he is razzle-dazzled.

Alderman Divver—I suppose it’s when a man has been on a tear. I saw a picture in The World of a dilapidated chap being taken to the station house between two policemen. The tired-looking party had the razzle-dazzle. 

George Slosson, the wizard of the cue—If I could only get at Jake Schaefer in a match game of billiards I could give him the razzle-dazzle in the most approved fashion.

Broker Ed Murphy—Razzle-dazzle is a nineteenth-century slang expression that in the eighteenth used to mean full as a boiled owl. But the 400 don’t use it. They say “somewhat screwed,” which is English, you know.

Broker William F. Howe—When a fellow has got bottled lightning in his brain and can’t get it out I guess he is razzle-dazzled.

Alderman Barry—I see people are using the term instead of “boycott.” But I don’t think it means just that. 

Assistant District Attorney Lindsay—Razzle-dazzle means a good old-fashioned drunk.

Lawyer John Graham—I never heard the expression before, but suppose it means something like hocus pocus. I mean to look it up.

Clerk Sparks, of the Criminal Courts—I suppose when a man is on a lark he is razzle-dazzled.

Actor Murphy, who created the razzle-dazzle song—One night after the theatre, after I had sung my razzle-dazzle song, I imbibed a little too much razzle-dazzle juice, and went along Broadway singing the song. I was run in and fined $10. I was razzle-dazzled.

Lawyer Fred Swain—When a man is somewhat under the influence, he usually feels razzled. If he escapes being dazzled as well he is lucky.

Probate Clerk Tinney—It’s when forty men come in here and ask forty questions apiece when I am busy. Then I get razzle-dazzled, and refer them to the Surrogate, who razzle-dazzles them in turn in short order.

Administration Clerk O’Brien—When a man is made to believe something that is not so he is razzle-dazzled.

Assistant Administration Clerk Scannell—When a man gets doubled he is razzle-dazzled.

Counsellor Joe Steiner—When you are introduced to a man and he steals your watch he razzle-dazzles you. 

Deputy Coroner Conway—When I was a young man I knew what razzle-dazzle meant, but for the last few years I have been out of practice. Possibly, however, during convention time I might still experience the razzle-dazzles.

Clerk Edward Reynolds—When a man has been having too good a time he is often razzle-dazzled.

Secretary Burns, of the Park Department—I have often heard the term, but really am at a loss to give you a definition. When a person does not know what he is about, I presume it may be claimed he is razzle-dazzled.

C.H. Smith, of the Park Department—It is like a razoo. People get the razoo or razzle-dazzle when they have been having too good a time.

J.J. Odell, of the Park Department—I am a Quaker, and not a New Yorker; so of course I have never experienced a razzle-dazzle. You had better ask some of the natives.

Deputy Mortgage Clerk Loper—When a man is too full for utterance, he is razzle-dazzled. 

Delivery Clerk Pyne—Wine looked on when it is red is apt to produce the razzle-dazzles.

Grantee Clerk Lynch—When a man is drunk as a lord he has no regard for anything and will do all sorts of razzle-dazzle things.

Broker P.G Weaver—When one has been out all night, painting the town red, so to speak, he is apt to feel “rocky” when he gets home—in other words he is razzle-dazzled.

Broker S.O. Caldwell—The conditions of the stock market in Wall Street is a razzle-dazzle.

Broker Louis Marks—When a man gets mixed he may be said to be razzle-dazzled.

Broker Walter Smith—Ask [US President] Cleveland what a razzle-dazzle is. He knows. He got one last fall [in losing his bid for re-election].

J.D and Mr. D., Wall Street brokers, said to razzle-dazzle a person was to entangle him.

Mr. E., also a Wall Street man, who said he had lived at the Windsor Hotel ten years and wanted this fact duly chronicled, claimed that razzle-dazzle meant hifalutin.

Broker M. said it meant hither and thither.

Broker H. defined it as follows: “When a gentleman does not know whether he wants a pancake or a gin cocktail he is razzle-dazzled.”

Broker C. Spencer Boyd—Under the surroundings and impressions of a lurid evening, and when the luridness is continued till the sun rises, a man is likely to feel razzled. When he cools off after a good sleep he is more likely to feel dazzled to think what a fool he made of himself.

Broker Robert Van Hueson—What do you ask me for? The didoes cut out by Ed Murphy after 12 o’clock at night are razzle-dazzlers.

Broker John Helyer—When a man gets off his base he is razzled and dazzled, too.

Broker Wood Gibson—When a man can’t tell the difference between a billiard ball and a [high]ball taken over the bar he is decidely razzle-dazzled.

Up to this point there had been the voice of one person to adopt the phrase into the language. Webster’s great work was declared to be seriously abridged while lacking this expressive form.

Billy Edwards, ex-champion lightweight pugilists—If I plank a man between the eyes or on the jaw I rather think he would be razzle-dazzled for a time, or if a man drinks too much of the sparkling water he is very liable to become slightly under the influence of the razzle-dazzle.

W.E. Harding, of the Police Gazette—We gave the detectives in Toronto the grand razzle-dazzle when we made the match for Jake Kilrain to fight John L. Sullivan right under their noses.

Arthur T. Lumley of the Illustrated News—I’d just like to razzle-dazzle John L. Sullivan for writing such an infernally long letter this week. Here are four columns which have got to be chopped down to less than two.

Frank Stevenson, the sporting man at 157 Bleeker Street—Do I know what razzle-dazzle means? Well, now, if I don't you can have my hat.

Billy Ottman, of the St. James Hotel—It’s to be skinned. I can’t think of anymore expressive explanation.

Clerk Simpson, of the St. James—Were you ever guyed? Well, then, you have been razzle-dazzled.

W.H. Robertson, of 296 Broadway—If you should go to a ball and have your overcoat and hat stolen and your pockets picked, I should say you have been razzle-dazzled in great shape.

“Yes,” chimed in L. Lavein, the well-known athelete, “and how about the umbrella? You are beaten out of anything nowadays, and you have to console yourself by the charming thought that you are razzle-dazzled.”

Harry Chapman, the veteran theatrical manager, who is on the other side of sixty—I first heard “razzle-dazzle” about thirty years ago as a gag by Billy O’Neill, an Irish comedian, who was then performing at the old Bowery Theatre. It was used in a farce where O’Neill played the lover and fooled “the ould man,” whom he said he had “razzle-dazzled.” If my memory serves me rightly, I also heard Tom Riggs, another Irish comedian, use the same term. It wouldn’t do to incorporate it in the language. Like every other slang word, it will die out in a little while.

Mike Kelly, the $10,000 prize beauty and pet of the baseball community—I first heard “razzle-dazzle” from George Floyd, Nat Goodwin’s manager, in Boston, last August or September. The song was originated in California by a social club, who gave it to Charlie Hoyt. Noah Webster’s spirit would rebel if we should put it in his dictionary.

Miss Ella Rodriguez, soprano singer on the vaudeville stage—I heard it as a gag before the song appeared, but never used it myself. I know the song well and have often sung it. I don’t think it sounds good enough for the dictionary.

Will Collins, comedian—I never heard it used on the stage in traveling companies I have appeared with, and it was not until the song came out that the word became commonly used. Being slang, we should not incorporate in our dictionaries.

Gus Heckler, presiding genius at the Bohemia—I first discovered it at the last election, when I ran for Alderman in the Eleventh Assembly District and got gloriously defeated. Lexicographers will scarely adopt the term.

Eugene Wellington, business manager of “The Dark Side of a Great City”—I first heard it seven or eight years ago in the Buckingham, at Louisville, where J.J. Quinlan, of the “Horseshow Four,” used it as a gag. I also heard him use it in this city. It will hardly do for Webster’s dictionary.

Harry Cottrell, comedian and singer—Jim Quinlan, of the “Horseshoe Four,” used “razzle-dazzle” in a variety performance in this city several years ago, giving it as a gag. There are good enough English words without giving the dictionary the “razzle-dazzle.”

seasickness / a merry-go-round with the jim-jams

American ship camoufleurs, c1918 (AI colorized)

Camouflage was originally a French slang term and did not migrate into English until 1915, as a result of the establishment of the first section de camouflage in military history. To large extent, that seems the case. 

But the OED (Oxford English Dictionary) points out that as early as 1885, in a French to English translation of Fortuné Du Boisgobey’s Old Age of Lecoq (in his Sensational Novels), the following line appears: “He was also master of the art of camoufflage or disguise, his face being without age and readily changed to any style of physiognomy.” Note two f’s in camoufflage. Aha!

No less puzzling is the origin of razzle-dazzle, which today is used willy-nilly as a more engaging name for disruptively-patterned World War I camouflage. We know that the term dazzle was adopted by the British Admiralty in 1917, when they approved a proposal by the artist Norman Wilkinson. But the word was dazzle, not razzle-dazzle. Yet, these days, the latter is almost inevitably used. There are books, films, and exhibitions about ship camouflage that are (for marketing purposes) called “razzle dazzle” (even, regrettably, some of my own).

It turns out that razzle-dazzle was in common use as English slang far in advance of WWI, and that, initially, it had nothing to do with ship camouflage. In general it referred to confusion and bewilderment (as from drunkenness or deceit). Here is how it was used by Juvenal, the author of An Englishman in New York (London: Stephen Swift, 1917, p. 7), “…if the man in the moon were to take it into his head to visit mother earth in search of what Americans used to call ‘razzle-dazzle,’ he would turn his airplane towards the lights of Broadway sometime after midnight.”

Razzle-Dazzle at Coney Island

As early as 1890, it was the name for a popular ride at amusement parks. In the following news article, which describes it in some detail, it is said to be equivalent to a “merry-go-round with the jim-jams,” one consequence of which may be seasickness on dry land.

UP, DOWN AND ALL AROUND, Have You Tried the Merry-Go-Round with the Jim-Jams? in The Scranton Republican (Scranton PA), December 18, 1890, p. 7—

“Whoopee!"

“Yah!”

“Let me off!”

"Wow!”

That's the way it goes every time, and the men at the ropes keep on jerking them and pulling away with unabated energy as it swings around and bobs up and down and makes eccentric circles.

What does?

Why, the “razzle dazzle," to be sure.

Don’t know what a razzle dazzle is, eh?

A razzle-dazzle is a—well, one man describes it as a merry-go-round with the jim-jams. That’s it, precisely, but as perhaps every one does not know how a merry-go-round acts when it has an an attack of mania-a-potu, here is a description of the razzle dazzle.

To begin with there is a heavy upright center pole about 25 feet high, set firmly in the ground and strongly braced. At the top of this pole is a spindle, and attached to the spindle are a number of wire ropes. The lower ends of these are fastened to a strong circular seat, which is suspended about five feet from the ground.

To better understand the arrangement, take a pencil and stand it upright on a table. Lay a bracelet or a napkin ring on the table so that it will encircle the pencil. Now, imagine a number of threads attached to the top of the pencil and tied to the napkin ring so that the ring is suspended from them. See?

That would be a miniature razzle-dazzle, except that instead of a napkin ring the circle should be made of thick boards so as to make a comfortable seat. Now are you beginning to catch the idea? If that is so, perhaps you would like to know how it works.

In the first place you pay five cents to the man who runs the thing. That is absolutely necessary. Then you walk up a stepladder and sit down on the razzle-dazzle circular seat. If there is no one else on it, your weight will bring it down close to the ground on your side, while the opposite side will naturally be high in the air.

The man who assisted you to your seat now turns the circle around and another victim gets on. In this way, if business is good, perhaps thirty or forty persons will be seated. When all are seated the stepladder is taken away out of danger.

Thus far you have only seen the razzle. Now comes the dazzle.

Two or three men grab hold of stout ropes which hang from the circular seat. They begin to walk around in a circle, like the ringmaster at the circus, and they pull the ropes with them. This sets the passengers swinging around and around.

After sufficient momentum has been attained a new motion is introduced. One side of the circular seat is yanked down to the round and the other side flies up in the air. This is continued until the delightful sensations of the whirlgig and the flying trapeze are experienced.

A trip on the cowcatcher of a locomotive in convulsions wouldn’t be a marker to the razzle-dazzle in full swing.

A combination of the motion of a ship in a cyclone and a wounded whale in a whirlpool comes a little nearer to it.

This keeps up for five minutes. At the end of that time you have had enough for your money. Maybe you’ve had more than enough. You either get off or fall off.

Then you go off to one side and experience what may be termed a paradoxical disease. You suffer from mal de mer [sea-sickness] on dry land. Try it.

Razzle-Dazzle at Steeplechase, Coney Island

Thirty-five years later, “razzle-dazzle” was apparently still a popular ride at amusement parks, as reported in an article titled RAZZLE-DAZZLE: Collapses at Glebe: Twelve People Injured in the Sydney Morning Herald (Sydney AU), February 28, 1925—

Twelve persons were injured when a razzle-dazzle collapsed in Derby Place, Glebe, shortly after 10 o’clock last night.

All those injured, with some others, were riding on the razzle-dazzle, when the part on which they were seated suddenly broke away from its pole. Many were thrown heavily to the ground, and some received severe injuries…

The police were informed that whilst the razzle-dazzle was in motion a number of youths, who were riding on it, jumped off. This affected the balance of the razzle-dazzle, which tilted, and, the cup on which it swung, becoming dislodged from its pivot, crashed with its passengers heavily to the earth.

Chelsea Arts Club Dazzle Ball 1919

The Sketch (March 19, 1919)

Among artists, designers and architects, there is a long tradition of sponsoring annual costume balls, fancy dress balls, or Beaux-Arts balls (not unlike the Mardi Gras), often amusingly raucous events, for the purpose of fundraising. At a Beaux-Arts ball in New York in 1931, for example, some of the city's most famous architects came dressed in costumes that were modeled after their own famous buildings. Among artists, given their fabled Bohemian bent, these parties typically turned into riotous fests of uninhibited and inebriated revelers, dressed in astonishing costumes (or, sometimes, barely dressed at all).

One of these events was the annual Chelsea Arts Ball in England, which the Chelsea Arts Club (founded in 1891) had sponsored at the Royal Albert Hall. The annual celebration was interrupted by World War I, which began in 1914, and only near the end of the war, in 1919, was it decided that the Chelsea Arts Ball could resume. This time however the theme chosen was the disruptive crazy-quilt patterns that had been applied to wartime dazzle-painted ships, intermixed with the public's bewilderment toward emerging styles of Modern Art: Cubism, Futurism, Vorticism, Surrealism and Dada. As a result, the 1919 fancy dress ball (held on the evening of March 12, 1919) became known as the Chelsea Arts Club's Dazzle Ball.

The event was widely covered by newspaper and magazine articles, as had been an earlier American "camoufleurs' ball" that took place in the winter of 1917 at the Willard Hotel in Washington DC, and a camoufleurs' "carnival ball" (sponsored by the League of American Penwomen) that was also held in Washington in February 1919. We've discussed these events in earlier blogposts, including an account of a comparable dazzle ball (modeled after the Chelsea Arts Club festival) that took place in Sydney AU on October 7, 1919.

In its March 22 issue, the Illustrated London News featured a spread of illustrations of the costumes and the dancing that had taken place at the Chelsea Arts Club's Dazzle Ball. A few days earlier, in its March 19 issue, The Sketch included on its front cover photographs of costumes that premiered that night (see cover reproduced above). At the bottom of the cover is a headline that reads THE GREAT "DAZZLE" BALL OF THE CHELSEA ARTS CLUB; HUMAN CAMOUFLAGE, and below that is this paragraph—

After an interval of five years, the Chelsea Arts Club once more gave a great fancy dress ball, last Wednesday, March 12. The Albert Hall was decorated for the occasion with a wonderful scheme of "Dazzle," as used in naval camouflage during the war, and a great many of the costumes were designed on similar lines. A good example is seen in the left-hand lower photograph, showing Mrs. Bertram Park (neé Yvonne Gregory), who is well-known as a painter of miniatures.

That portrait of Yvonne Gregory Park (she herself was also a photographer), which was taken by her husband British photographer Bertram Park, is easily the best-known photograph of a costume from the Dazzle Ball. Equally wonderful is the photograph at the bottom right of the cover, showing two women, one draped in the American flag, the other in the Union Jack.

In the same issue of The Sketch (listed by HathiTrust Digital Library as in public domain in the US) is another full page of costumes, on page 353 (as shown below), this time with the page headline ON THE RAZZLE DAZZLE: COSTUMES AT THE CHELSEA ARTS and then at the bottom of the page, a smaller second headline reads: THE "DAZZLE" BALL OF THE CHELSEA ARTS CLUB, AT THE ALBERT HALL: SOME NOTABLE FIGURES, followed by this paragraph—

The Sketch (March 19, 1919)

As already mentioned, the Chelsea Arts Ball on March 12 was a wonderful success. The Albert Hall presented literally a "Dazzling" spectacle. Our central photograph shows Miss Margot Kelly, who recently left "Oh, Joy," at the Kingsway, to appear shortly in a new American comedy. She is wearing a Columbine dress of her own design. To the left of her is Mrs. Barribal, wife of a well-known artist whose work is familiar to our readers, in a costume which she made from an armchair cover.

On page 355 of that same magazine, there is a brief article (attributed to "The Worldling") that is titled The Chelsea Arts Ball and reads as follows—

It was a case of "dazzle-dazzle, joy and jazzle" at the Albert Hall last Wednesday night, when the long-heralded folic of the Chelsea Arts Club came off. As all the world knows, the scheme of decoration was based on the art of "Dazzle," as applied during the war to the disguising of ships and the discomfiture of U-boats. The same artists who did that work for the Admiralty—Lieutenant-Commander Norman Wilkinson, Lieutenant Cecil King, [American] Captain Burnell Poole, and Sergeant [Walter E.] Webster—had undertaken to camouflage the Albert Hall in similar style for the great occasion. The background was a "dazzle" battleship, with a "dazzle" sunset, and all the boxes were hung with muslin draperies in "disruptive" colors. The "dazzling" of the dancers themselves was left, of course, to their own individual ingenuity, and many artists had designed costumes for the camouflage of the human form. The effect was a whirling scene that delighted the hearts of the Vorticists.

In advance of the Dazzle Ball, The Sketch had published a page of preparatory drawings of four of the anticipated costumes, on page 292, on March 5 (in those drawings, Yvonne Gregory Bertram's striped costume is referred to as the "jazzle"). Following the event, a further, briefer note (underscoring the contributions of Cecil King and Walter E. Webster by name) appeared on page xii of the March 26 issue of The Sketch.

Apparently, The Sketch was enjoying a lively reader response to its features on the Dazzle Ball, and indeed it returned to the subject again in a cartoon (attributed to Thorpe) on p. 427 of the June 25 issue. Reproduced below, the headline of the cartoon reads: THE EVE OF THE FANCY-DRESS BALL, while the caption beneath it is worded IT'S A WISE CHILD THAT KNOWS ITS OWN MOTHER.

The Sketch (June 25, 1919)

There's much more to this—but we'll save it for a future post.

broken figures / the ruling style at present was dazzle

Cover of Jack London's novel (1902)

As we are once again learning at this point in American life, even if something is blatantly false, it can be widely assumed to be true, if it continues to be repeated. Over many decades of researching the history of modern-era camouflage (ship camouflage specifically), I’ve watched as people have increasingly claimed that Americans popularly referred to disruptively-patterned WWI ship camouflage as razzle dazzle.

While it is true that the British called it dazzle or dazzle-painting when they officially adopted that approach in 1917, neither they nor the Americans called it razzle-dazzle. They certainly could have, since the term was in use (in the US) and would have been appropriate, but they chose not to. If anything, the Americans called it baffle painting, in part because they were reluctant to use the term that the British had already chosen. Another proposed American term was jazz painting, but eventually, dazzle won the day.

In earlier posts we’ve talked about the etymology of razzle-dazzle and its relevance to ship camouflage. Two other more recent findings may provide additional help—

First, the term is central to an autobiographical novel, titled The Cruise of the Dazzler, by American writer Jack London (1902). In that novel, the central character named John Barleycorn purchases a sloop named the Dazzler, which is central to the book. At age fifteen, London himself had purchased a comparable boat, called the Razzle Dazzle, with which he harvested oysters to sell to restaurants in the San Francisco Bay. So the term was commonly in use, but far in advance of WWI proposals for wartime ship camouflage.

Second, it may be helpful to quote a passage from a magazine called Clothier and Furnisher (January 1889), which claims that razzle-dazzle was current as American English slang as early as 1886, and suggests that the following passage may be its first use in print—

My confrère, The Chevalier, last month gave a new name to the scarfs of disjointed pattern when he called them the razzle-dazzle. The name was evidently a hit of the most patent character, for in several avenue and Broadway stores the clerks have thrown out a display of broken figures before me and explained that the ruling style at present was the razzle-dazzle, and the word seems to have been equally effective with the public, for when it is quoted by the live salesman, the customer, I am told is at once interested and caught by it.

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

Sale-priced books on camouflage / free shipping

ship camouflage artist remembers Norman Wilkinson

Rogers' ship camouflage proposal

Good news!  A long-lost camoufleur has now been rediscovered. I have only now unearthed a British-American writer and illustrator, named Stanley R.H. Rogers (1887-1961), who wrote about thirty books (a differing source says fifty), many of which are his illustrated accounts of maritime history and exploration. 

Of further interest is the fact that he contributed to ship camouflage, American and British, in both world wars. I discovered this in one of his books, Freak Ships (New York: Greenberg Publishers, 1936), a book about odd aspects of maritime history. In that book, he includes three of his drawings of WWI-era ship camouflage, as reproduced in this blog post.

In the first drawing, he shows a plan for ship camouflage (above) that he himself submitted to the US Navy Department, early in the war (c1917-18). His proposal was turned down—he says thankfully—as being ineffective.

I was not sorry my designs were rejected [he states, because] they were based on the general rule that vessels show dark against the skyline, and by painting them in wavy horizontal dazzle bands of pale hues, the bands near the water being darker than those on the superstructure which tried to effect a compromise with the tone of the sky. Obviously a compromise, since the changing light of the sky makes it impossible for a ship to meet every condition. Thus a pearl-gray ship against a hazy bright sky would be practically invisible, but with a dark cloud behind her she would stand out a clear white silhouette. Likewise a dark gray hull against a black storm cloud is practically invisible, but against the skyline of a normal day her presence would be advertised for twenty miles. Youthfully, and erroneously, I thought a working compromise could be reached. The initial mistake was to imagine that a vessel could be made invisible or nearly so under most conditions.

Wilkinson's ship camouflage proposal (approximate)

Instead, the American Navy adopted an approach to ship camouflage that had earlier been proposed by a British artist, Lieutenant Commander Norman Wikinson, called “dazzle-painting,” as portrayed (if not exactly) in Rogers’ second and third illustrations. The second is the profile of the starboard side of a Wilkinson dazzle-style design; while the third is a very rough rendering of the camouflaged ship’s appearance through a U-boat periscope. Wilkinson saw how futile it was, Rogers notes, to stress low visibility, 

and concerned himself with perfecting a camouflage that, while making no claim to rendering a ship invisible, did however so break up its familiar shape that a distant observer, especially at the eye-piece of a submarine’s periscope, could not accurately estimate its course or speed. 

He goes on to say quite a bit more about the development of ship camouflage, especially during WWI, when the dazzle system was first adapted—

Naval camouflage was not new in 1914…In 1917 when the German submarine menace made it imperative to find more efficient protection to British shipping, both naval and mercantile, Norman Wilkinson, the famous marine painter, with temporary quarter-deck rank in the RNVR, put forward a set of designs for ship camouflage that was later adopted by all the Allied navies. I have already indicated the nature of this plan. The scheme was something entirely new and became known to the public as camouflage and to the Admiralty as dazzle painting. The inventor’s sole claim was to distort the shape of a vessel sufficiently to confuse the enemy as to her course, though it also disguised her type and size to a great extent. A submarine commander, peering through the watery lens of a periscope, found it almost impossible to judge the victim’s course accurately enough to justify his risking a costly torpedo on her. The illustration is handicapped by the limitations of black and white, but may convey an idea of how this deception was achieved. It will be noticed that the violently contrasting patterns and colors immediately break up the lines of the vessel, making it difficult, even in a drawing, to decide exactly the ship’s orientation. The laws of perspective are set at naught. As soon as the virtues of the artist’s scheme were thoroughly grasped by some of its more conservative objectors in the Admiralty an emergency act was passed making it obligatory for all British ships to be so painted.

Rogers' drawing of periscope view

There was nothing haphazard about the plan or the method of carrying out the dazzle-painting. For purposes of camouflage, merchant ships were divided into thirty-seven different types, and a model of each type was studied through a periscope set up in a prepared workshop. Each model was set up on a turntable and revolved again painted sky backgrounds, while the artist studied them to decide on the maximum design for distortion. The Admiralty, from lukewarm indifference, came to regard dazzle-painting sufficiently important to send representatives to all the principal ports to instruct the American, French, Belgian, Italian and Japanese admiralities on this new art of dazzle-painting, to so disguise 4,000 merchant steamers and nearly 400 warships and spend over two and a half million pounds carrying it out.

A dazzle-painted ship looked like nothing on sea or land. The distortion, a better word than disguise, was almost perfect. To a new arrival from another world the sight of a dazzle-painted ship would give him reason to think terrestrial folk were crazy. For the essence of dazzle-painting is to follow no logical lines of pattern. Dazzle-painting, while being profoundly logical, owed its value to its apparently senseless chaos of lines. The art is to conceal the art. The adage might have been written especially for dazzle-painting.

title page of Rogers' book (1936)

Stanley R.H. Rogers was born in Nottingham, England, but his family moved to Olympia WA, when he was still an infant. He returned to England in advance of WWI, and studied art in London at Goldsmith’s College. At school he met his future wife, also an illustrator, named Franke (née Woodhouse) Rogers, who illustrated about 50 children’s books in her lifetime. The couple resided in England from 1920-1945, and during WWII, Stanley Rogers served as a Royal Navy camoufleur, as a civilian. After the war, the couple lived in the vicinity of New York, where Rogers died in 1916.

Also see this earlier post, in which Norman Wilkinson's granddaughter, British architect Camilla Wilkinson, is interviewed about ship camouflage.

Norman Wilkinson | Dazzle Plans for US Ships 2B

Above Proposal for a British "dazzle camouflage" scheme (showing both sides of the same ship), designed by UK artist and camoufleur Norman Wilkinson (note signature). It appears to be one of a number of plans (as many as 180) prepared by Wilkinson and his team of British artists for use on US merchant ships c1917 in advance of the formation of an American Navy Camouflage Section. Labels omitted and image restored.

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MARINE CAMOUFLAGE: Use In Warfare in Kalgoorie Miner (Western Australia) April 1, 1919, p. 6—

On marine camouflage a widespread error exists. Most people suppose that its object is the concealment of ships, and wonder how it effects that purpose. Of course, it is nothing of the sort, but an attempt to break up the form of a ship in such a way as to make it difficult for an attacking U-boat to estimate the course. Though it is impossible to say how many ships have escaped destruction by means of “Dazzle,” strong evidence has been forthcoming of its value, together with grateful tributes from merchant captains. 

The originator of “Dazzle” is Lieutenant Commander Norman Wilkinson, the well-known painter of ships and the sea. In May 1917, he submitted his scheme to the Admiralty. At that time most transports were painted black, than which no color could be more favorable to a submarine on the look out for a prey. Commander Wilkinson’s argument was that if a ship could be broken up into strongly contrasted design her course could not be observed without longer periscope observation, and even then not exactly. This delay and uncertainty might prevent the submarine getting into firing position until the ship had obtained a chance of escape. 

The Admiralty store ship Industry was the first to be painted, and served well as an experiment. “Dazzle” was next tried on 50 transports, from which encouraging reports were received. Afterwards the scheme was extended to the whole of the mercantile marine under the Defense of the Realm Act, which meant that it became compulsory on shipowners to have their ships painted. 

A staff, mostly of artists and architects, was collected and trained at the Royal Academy; this being the start of the “Dazzle” section. This company sent out its members to the various ports, each officer being supplied with a complete set of the plans and design then in hand. From time to time new patterns were evolved, which were sent on to the scattered staff. As soon as a merchantman came into port she was painted under the directions of the “Dazzle” officer, in conjunction with the Director of Shipyard Repairs. 

Wilkinson ship models at Imperial War Museum, London

“Dazzle” did not make its way into the respect of the mercantile marine without a little struggle. In his room at Burlington House, Commander Wilkinson has a demonstration theatre which has brought conviction to some very great naval authorities; or, if they did not need convincing, has proved to them what odd tricks “Dazzle” can play even with experience eye. A model of a camouflaged ship is placed on a board behind a screen. In the screen is a periscope, to which the experimenting look-out man applies his eye. He is asked to indicate the course of the ship he sees on a compass dial by his side. This indication is then compared with the direction in which the ship’s bows are actually pointing; and the discrepancy between the two is found to be wide—as a rule, ludicrously wide. Similar demonstration theatres were set up at the ports for the persuasion of skeptical mariners, whose discomfiture was exceeding when they discovered how far 
“Dazzle” had led astray their wiliest perception. From the Academy school practically every maritime allied nation has been trained. All the American destroyers and patrol boats have been painted with designs supplied by Commander Wilkinson and his assistants. France sent over four officers for lessons, and then started a “Dazzle” section of her own in Paris. Italy was supplied with the British plans and designs. 

At the request of the United States Navy Department and the Shipping Corporation, Commander Wilkinson went to America to advise, with the result that his scheme was adopted. So almost every merchantman at sea in the last 18 months has been “dazzled” on British lines.

Besets Calculations of U-Boat Commanders in WWI

SS Suevic, British steamship

C.C. Brainerd, DAZZLE PAINTING ISN'T CAMOUFLAGE; CAN'T CONCEAL SHIPS. But A conglomeration of Colors Can, and Does. Puzzle U-Boat Pirates. HAS SAVED MANY A CRAFT, in Brooklyn Daily Eagle, July 14, 1918, p. 2—

Washington, July 13—Often Washington hears the echo of talk among people at the Atlantic seaports, who see odd things when a ship or a convoy sets sail for Europe or returns to these shores. These people see things that look like a hasheesh dream; strange objects of extraordinary colors moving along in the water, that finally resolve themselves into ships. And the talk that follows is generally to the effect:

"Well, if that's what they call camouflage, it's nothing but insanity. Nobody can help spotting a ship that looks like that. It simply shouts at you."

The Washington naval and marine experts smile when they hear that sort of comment. In a general way, they admit the criticism—the ship does shout at you. But they point out that shouting may be so loud as to be confusing; and that is exactly the theory on which they paint ships nowadays. They do not try to conceal them; that has been tried and found impossible. So they have resorted to confusion, rather than concealment. And they do not call it camouflage; they call it dazzle painting.

Can't Conceal Ships at Sea
When the Ancient Mariner said: As idle as a painted ship / Upon a painted ocean, he may have had the modern scheme of dazzle painting in mind. But he was wrong on one or two points. The painted ship of today is far from idle and it does not sail on a painted ocean. If it were possible to paint the ocean, ship concealment would be easy. On shore, where the armies practice camouflage, it is possible to alter and dress up the background so as to assist in concealing an object. But at sea the background must always remain the same. Water and sky meet at the horizon, and that is all there is to it.

Early in submarine warfare it was learned that ships of solid color, no matter what it was, were comparatively easy to pick out. Experiments were made with various neutral tints, the favorite being the battleship gray so long employed in navies. Conspicuous shades, like white, were avoided, as a matter of course, but nevertheless the submarines found easy picking. The ship in her normal garb was readily identified as to size, character, speed, direction and other elements entering into the problem of shooting a torpedo at her. Try as they would, it was not possible for the marine experts to make the ship invisible, or even semi-visible. Thomas A. Edison was one of the famous inventors who tried his hand at the problem, and without much success.

Dazzle Painting Nearly a Science
Having discovered that it was of little or no use to attempt conceal-ment by the use of paint, the marine sharps began studying the problem of trying to confuse the eyes of the submarines, and they soon learned that here was a promising field of endeavor. So they plunged into the realm of dazzle painting, until it has now become considerable of a science. One ship, they found, will lend itself to a certain style of treatment, depending upon her size, shape and speed, while another vessel must be painted in an entirely different sort of way. It is desirable, too, to maintain a wide variety of styles, so that submarine commanders may not become accustomed to a particular thing.

Sometimes a large ship will go to sea with the image of a smaller ship painted on her side, the latter image standing out as the conspicuous feature of the painting. At a distance of five or ten miles such a vision has been found to be decidedly confusing, particularly in a rough sea and thick weather. The submarine commander often thinks he sees one kind of a ship when he is looking at another. Further than that, by the employment of dazzle paint, he may be deceived into thinking that a ship is approaching him head on, when as a matter of fact, it is broadside to him.

Aim Is to Puzzle Pirates
There are so many varieties of dazzle painting that there seems to be no regular rule about it, although certain broad principles are followed. The mere fact that it is not an exact science is one of its strong points, in the matter of ship protection. Sometimes plain black and white or gray tints are employed. Again, the most vivid colors are used—reds, yellows, green, etc. Some ships of [unclear] stripes and some in spots, of all sizes and shapes. Two ships of identical size and build may be painted in an entirely different manner, so that the submarine pirate finds it impossible to lay down any general classification.

It is undoubtedly true that many of the dazzle painted ships are more conspicuous in their war colors than they would be if dressed up in the sane and normal way. But that does not make them easy marks for, a submarine; it makes them more difficult to hit. The "sub" commander sighting one of these vessels is often in doubt for a considerable time as to just which way his prospective victim is headed, how big she is, and how fast she is moving, although these are things that he must know to a certainty if he hopes to make a successful attack. And while he is trying to make head or tail out of the confusing object on the horizon he often loses the precious opportunity. The ship, by her dazzle paint, confuses him until it has passed beyond the danger point. This, of course, is by no means always the case, but it has happened sufficiently often to prove that dazzle painting is worth while. The purpose constantly in the mind of the dazzle painters is not to hide the ship, but to turn it into such an apparition that it dazzles the eye and upsets the calculations of the German who is trying to plot its range, its course and its speed.

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

Roy R. Behrens, Camoupedia

 

Camouflage Artist | Cecil George Charles King

WWI camouflage ships (1918) Cecil George Charles King

Above Watercolor painting by Cecil George Charles King (1918), showing two dazzle-painted merchant ships (one in conspicuous zebra stripes) at dockside in Leith. Scotland. This and other images, with additional text and links, can be found on the 14-18-NOW WWI Centenary Art Commissions webpage. Starting this season (2018), in marking the final year of the centenary, that organization will be hosting dazzle-themed events in New York.

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Cecil George Charles King (not to be confused with an Irish artist named Cecil King) was born in the London Borough of Hounslow on August 6, 1881. He initially studied engineering, but in a change of profession, he chose to study art instead in London at the  Westminster School of Art. He also studied in Paris, where he worked with Jean-Paul Laurens and Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen.

In 1917, when British painter Norman Wilkinson was sanctioned by the government to set up at Burlington House (Royal College of Art) a wartime “dazzle-painting” team for ship camouflage, King was “Wilkinson’s right-hand man.” This was in part, as James Taylor (2016) explains, because King “was a long-standing friend with shared interests in maritime subjects and poster designs which promoted travel by rail and ship.” He joined the camouflage section on August 18, 1917, and remained there for the rest of the war. 

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King appears briefly in a news article by Mordaunt Hall (byline of British-born journalist Frederick Wentworth Mordaunt Hall, who had been an advance man for Buffalo Bill's Wild West, spied for England in World War I, and later became the first film critic for the New York Times), titled THE SILK HATTED MAN OF THE GEORGE WASHINGTON, in the New York Herald (March 2, 1919)—

Lieutenant Cecil King, RNVR, one of the men who have accomplished great things as a "dazzle painter" of ships, started the story ball rolling with:

"A young English cadet was ordered to come before an admiral who, as the youngsters put it in the royal navy, wanted to look into his eyeballs. 'Name three great English admirals,' said the examining admiral in loud tones. The cadet, sitting on the corner of a chair that might have held three his size, was perhaps not exactly at ease in such august presence.

'Drake, sir,' he began.

'Very good,' thundered the Admiral. 'Now another?'

'Nelson, sir.'

'Very good, and the third?'

The cadet moved forward on his chair and then piped:

'I didn't quite catch your name, sir.'"

We were all laughing when who should come through our compartment but [American] Admiral [William] Sims and one of his aids.

•••

Of greater value and relevance is a news feature (a report on an article written by King) titled DAZZLE PAINTING that appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald (New South Wales, Australia) on September 2, 1919 (p. 6). This is the full text—

During the war the secrets of camouflage and dazzle painting were jealously guarded, but since then the curtain has been lifted, and an article by Mr. Cecil King in the last issue of the journal of The Imperial Arts League throws still further light on the subject. Dazzle painting is technically not camouflage, but a specialized and comparatively recent development of it. It was introduced in 1917, when Mr. Norman Wilkinson, the well-known marine artist, was placed in charge of the new department, with Mr. King as his assistant. Its success was instantaneous; before long the personnel of the staff had been many times multiplied, depots established in every part of consequence, and the whole of the mercantile marine which plied in dangerous waters clothed in a Josephean coat of many colors. The object of dazzle painting was briefly to create illusion by applying certain principles of optics to the treatment of solid masses by painting out shadows, for instance, or by painting them in where they did not exist. The effect of a good design was to make it extremely difficult for an observer from the waterline to determine the character or size of a ship, or to judge the course she was steering. As the design depended on its efficiency on its conformity to the structure of the individual ship, no two designs could be precisely alike, but by degrees certain schemes of color and arrangement were found to answer best, and then a general plan was adopted, with modification to suit each particular case; finally the "zebra pattern" was evolved, of which we have seen so many examples in Sydney Harbor. The dazzle painter's art was a highly complex one; he had to take many perplexing factors into consideration: different conditions of light and atmosphere required different methods of treatment. A design that would protect a ship bound for the Archangel through the misty grayness of the North Sea and the Arctic would be totally unsuitable for a voyage through the hard, brilliant light of the Mediterranean. He could not afford to work by rule of thumb, and the success which attended his efforts is proved by the decline in the rate of sinkings. While everyone rejoices in the removal of the occasion for dazzle painting, there are some who regret the latter's disappearance. It produced an effect resembling a crazy dream from Alice in Wonderland, but it gave a touch of variety and picturesqueness now lacking in shipping. To see a great liner in her camouflage was to be reminded of a very dignified and imposing lady reluctantly masquerading at a fancy dress ball in a fantastic futurist costume.

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Long after the war, King published an article titled MARINE CAMOUFLAGE (he was responding to an earlier article in the same magazine) in Ships and ship models: a magazine for all lovers of ships and the sea (November 1937, pp. 73-76). The article doesn't offer much that isn't already known (it does give credit to the work of Norman Wilkinson, Abbott H. Thayer, Professor Abel, W.L. Wylie, and an artist named Parkinson), as in the following excerpt (p. 74)—

Dazzle camouflage was based on a realization of the fact that it is impossible to conceal a merchant ship from the submarine, even if she be not emitting smoke, and that—if the presence of the ship were known—it was far better to confuse the submarine's estimates of her true course and other matters, by distorting her appearance, than to attempt any reduction of her visibility. This result had to be obtained by using violent contrasts of color, or rather of tone, many of the most efficient designs being of black and white only.

King's illustrations were often published in such prominent periodicals as The Sphere and Illustrated London News, and as travel posters. He was vice-president of the Society of Marine Artists, and, in 1932, became Marine Painter to the Royal Thames Yacht Club.

Cecil King died on December 9, 1942.

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Sources
Behrens, Roy R. Camoupedia: a compendium of research on art, architecture and camouflage. Dysart IA: Bobolink Books, 2006.
Behrens, Roy R., ed. Ship shape: a dazzle camouflage sourcebook. Dysart IA: Bobolink Books, 2006.
Taylor, James. Dazzle: disguise and disruption in war and art. UK: Pool of London Press, 2016.
Williams, David. Liners in battledress. St. Catharines, Ontario: Vanwell Publishing Ltd, 1989.

NOTE A shorter, different version of this text has also been contributed to askART.com. 

new signed copies still remain