Muirhead Bone, Decoy Ships and Camouflage

Muirhead Bone, dazzle-painted ship (c1919)

Above Muirhead Bone, drawing of a WWI dazzle-painted ship, in David W. Bone, Merchantmen-at-Arms: The British Merchants' Service in the War London: Chatto & Windus, 1919.

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Albert Tomlin (WWI soldier from Waltham MA), quoted in 90 HUNS KILLED BY BAYONET: Waltham Boy Back With Grim Tales of "Over There" in Boston Sunday Post, May 5, 1918, p. 24—

The transatlantic steamers are each convoyed by one cruiser and eight destroyers, and each convoy is accompanied by a decoy ship [aka Q-ships]. This decoy ship is camouflaged to look like a slow-going freighter. 

The eight destroyers accompany the liner half way across the Atlantic, circling around the vessel, while the decoy ship trails along behind. The cruiser is required in case an enemy raider should appear. The idea of the decoy ship is to lure the submarine up to destroy the slow-going craft. It has every appearance of a freighter that can only make a speed of four to six knots an hour. But simply by touching a button the false sides fall away. Then you have a 32-knot destroyer. If a submarine comes up, this destroyer throws off its disguise, turns about and rams the U-boat.

HMS Mauretania (1918), New York Harbor

 


Many ships resort to camouflage, but the most effective thus far employed is the camouflage adopted by the Standard Oil vessels. These are daubed with green and white painting, somewhat like a checkerboard. It makes the ship invisible except on a very clear day. You cannot see it until you are right on to it.

Australian Decoy Cow

Papier mache decoy cow (1944)

For more about this decoy papier mache milk cow, devised by World War II Australian camouflage artists, click here…

Camouflage Artists | The Kearton Brothers

The Keartons' stuffed cow decoy

One of our favorite websites, hands down, is that of The Public Domain Review. Once there, perhaps our favorite essay (and one that's especially pertinent to our camouflage blog) is John Bevis' account of two turn-of-the-century wildlife photographers, the Kearton brothers. Titled Stuffed Ox, Dummy Tree, Artificial Rock: Deception the Work of Richard and Cherry Kearton, the essay describes and illustrates the ingenious attempts of these British pranksters to cleverly conceal themselves, in order to take candid photographs of animals in their natural habitat. They then published the results in several books (all of which are in public domain and available online). Bevis (author of the essay) has himself published a book about these phenomenal, pioneering naturalists, titled The Keartons: Inventing Nature Photography (Uniformbooks, 2016).

Above are two of their photographs, showing two views of one of their inventions, a stuffed ox, (in Bevis' words)—

a hide realistically shaped over a padded frame, whose interior was just sufficiently capacious for both camera, mounted in the brisket and focusing through a hole in the hide, and photographer, bent into an excruciatingly uncomfortable posture…The stuffed ox enjoyed a brilliant but brief working life, being retired damaged at the end of the 1900 season after being blown over with Cherry [Kearton] inside.

But there's more—much more—such as a stuffed sheep, a large artificial rock, a spurious hollow tree trunk, a mask that shields the photographer's face, and a phony rubbish heap. Anyone familiar with various wartime camouflage tricks (see for example the decoy papier maché cow below, held aloft by World War I French camoufleurs), said to have originated with artists, will recognize that the Keartons' inventions anticipate those by at least a decade.

French camoufleurs with cow decoy

Quaker guns and non-functioning decoy cannons

Wooden artillery used for training purposes

During World War I, non-functioning imitation cannons served two purposes. If they were more or less accurate models of actual battlefield artillery (above), they could be used to train soldiers to become accustomed to their use.

At the same time, there was also a need for non-functioning dummy cannons, traditionally known as “Quaker guns,” to throw off the enemy’s estimates of the size and location of forces. These were often crudely built from scrap lumber, since they would only be seen from a distance. Others (like the one below, probably made from papier maché) were more convincingly modeled. Once assembled and put into position, it was important to camouflage them as if they were genuine functioning guns.

Non-functioning decoy cannon, not yet camouflaged

Harrison S. Morris | His memories of Abbott H. Thayer

Harrison S. Morris

Above Photograph of Harrison S. Morris (1856-1948), a writer, editor, and arts administrator. From 1893-1905, he was the managing director of the Philadelphia Academy of the Fine Arts, the nation’s oldest art school. In 1896, he married Anna Wharton, whose father was Joseph Wharton, a prominent industrialist who co-founded Bethlehem Steel, as well as Swarthmore College. Morris was the editor of Lippincott’s Magazine, and the art editor of the Ladies Home Journal. A prolific writer, he was the author of poetry, fiction, and essays. He was in frequent contact with artistic and literary figures of his time, including (as described below) Abbott Handerson Thayer and George de Forest Brush.

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Harrison S. Morris, Confessions in Art. New York: Sears Publishing, 1930, pp. 142-144—

It was he [Abbott H. Thayer] and George de Forest Brush who, I believe, first thought of camouflage for ships at sea. They had pondered much and experimented much over the scientific problems of light and color, even outside the uses of pigment. They were among those to whom art brings ripened intellect, like Morse and Fulton, inventors who revolutionized the world's methods of contact.

So when we were in the war with Spain, Brush and Thayer disinterestedly went to Washington and offered their services and discoveries to the Secretary of the Navy. Of course, he was skeptical, as official life always is of change. He wanted to know, you know, and all that sort of thing. But while he was deliberating, and telling perhaps why the scheme was no good, one of the painters stuck in the ground a slender stick which he held in his hand, painted after their theory of protective coloration. Then Brush alluded and pointed in the course of conversation to the stick before them. To the Secretary of the Navy, there was no stick in sight. He went on speaking his conventional thought. But quietly and as if accidentally one of the painters turned the slender stick around in its place, so that the sun touched it another way, and, would you believe it, there was the stick which the Secretary could not see.

I rather think nothing came of the offer in the day of the Spanish War. But we know vividly enough what came of it later, and what ships and lives were saved by the wisdom of the two incomparable artists who thus could coordinate their art to the uses of life.

Thayer holding one of his duck decoys upsidedown

And another time, so Brush tells me, Thayer was invited to lecture on his theories of color before a Royal Institution of Science in London. He had before him on the platform a table on which was visible a decoy duck of wood such as sportsmen use in gunning. In his address, he alluded much to these ducks before him, and as well before the audience. At last, the patience of one of the English pundits could stand this no longer. He got up in some irritation at the offense to his intellect of speaking of ducks when there was only one duck in view. Would the learned gentleman be pleased to explain why he referred to ducks, thus plural, when there was only one duck in sight? He sat down well satisfied with exposing an American impostor who didn't know how to use the English language.

Thayer then gave a quick twist to a wooden duck, made invisible by his coloring, and the second bird was exposed in all its solidity. So was the English skeptic.

whyah duck decoy, whyah no chicken hunting cartoon

Above This is the cover of the October 20, 1909, issue of Puck, an American humor magazine that was founded in 1875 and continued until 1918. This cartoon was published about five years prior to the official adoption (by the French Army) of the practice of wartime camouflage. So although it doesn't use the word, it is nevertheless a portrayal of camouflage, such as the employment of decoys.

In the cartoon, two hunters armed with shotguns (labeled on their clothing as "Political Boss" and "Public Service Corporation") are concealed in the reeds on the edge of a lake, waiting for birds overhead to alight. On the water in front of them are various bird decoys, labeled "Respectable Candidates," with which they hope to lure the flocks of birds (labeled "Votes") to land. The text below the cartoon reads "They know the kinds of decoys to use."

Also see Abbott H. Thayer's Vanishing Ducks: Surveillance, Art and Camouflage.

RELATED LINKS 

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

camouflaged dummies as artists' wartime specialty

soldiers placing decoys / artist unknown

CAMOUFLAGE—THE ARTISTS' BIT IN THE WAR in Oregon Daily Journal (Portland), August 18, 1917—

One of the interesting developments of the world war is the art of "camouflage," wherein artists excel. Camouflage is accomplished in a variety of ways, the general Idea being to deceive the enemy—to make him think he sees something that he doesn't see, or to make him see something he thinks he doesn't.

It is a trick in which nature excels, the wily opossum and the chameleon and its coat of changeable hue being probably the best known examples. The marking on the wings of a butterfly, the shaping of insects like leaves, the coloring of the sage hen to blend with the sagebrush, are but a few of the natural demonstrations of the principle of camouflage.

In warfare, thrusting above a trench a helmet stuck on a bayonet to draw enemy fire is a crude example. Raiders carry a dummy smokestack to hide their identity, submarines carry fake periscopes, etc.

Getting down to the finer points of the game, and this is where the artists come in, waves and foam are painted on a warship to deceive the enemy as to the ship's waterline, and the "tank" is so painted that at a comparatively short distance it merges with the landscape and is hard to distinguish.

The French and English have even gone so far as to stretch canvas upright to a height of several feet, and to paint trees, shrubbery and landscape on it, so that to the enemy it will look like the edge of a woods. Behind this curtain, then, like stage hands passing behind the back drop on a stage, thousands of troops have marched to new positions. To fool enemy airmen, canvas stretched like a canopy over a roadway is painted to blend with the surrounding field, while soldiers march beneath It, or it ls painted to represent a road over which the enemy will keep lookout for troops while the troops march elsewhere.

And so on. Camouflage is really playing an important part in strategy of campaigning, and the United States army war department has so recognized it as to put artists at the large training camps to teach the art, and painters and decorators are enlisting in special camouflage branches of the service. The illustration above shows troops placing "dummy" soldiers in position to draw enemy fire, and [below] is a camouflaged "Yankee" [a dummy made of papier maché, before being painted]…

inspection of unpainted American decoy

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 / 

FALSE COLORS: Art, Design and Modern Camouflage

CAMOUPEDIA: A Compendium of Research

on Art, Architecture and Camouflage

SHIP SHAPE: A Dazzle Camouflage Sourcebook

Hunters Masquerade as Cow (1578)

US Patent No. 586,145 (1897)

Above Patent drawings for US Patent No. 586,145, titled "Hunting Decoy," as devised by J. Sievers, Jr. (1897). Not a bad idea, but apparently nothing new. As evidenced by two 1578 Dutch engravings by Philips Galle (shown below on this page), as early as the 16th century European deer hunters were camouflaging themselves by masquerading as cows. In both prints, notice the telltale human feet apparent beneath the cow costumes. Both prints (out of rights and in public domain) are in the collection of the Rijksmuseum.

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Anon, from the Humeston New Era (Humeston IA), Wednesday, December 21, 1921—

How to stop certain Iowa druggists from making bootleg whisky under the camouflage of cologne and similar euphonious preparations is the problem which Prohibition Enforcement Officer Bronson finds himself up against. Some druggists are getting alcohol ostensibly for legitimate purposes and converting it into bootleg whisky, Mr. Bronson told Commissioner Haynes, and it is difficult to detect them. Before departing for Iowa from Washington he urged the commissioner to allow him six more field men and two officers who are druggists. Indications are the added force will be granted.

Engravings by Philips Galle (1578)

hunter becomes a normal irregularity in the landscape

Above Drawings submitted for US Patent No 5,572,823 titled "Hand Held Decoy and Hunter Shield," invented by J.R. Savaria (1996).

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René Bache, POPULAR SCIENCE: Pity the Poor Ducks, in the Portsmouth Daily Times (Portsmouth OH), May 24, 1919—

Duck hunters and other sportsmen in pursuit of game will no longer require "blinds" or other such means of concealment. They will wear snipers' suits instead.

The "cap of invisibility," which, when donned, rendered its wearer viewless, has figured in more than one fairy story. In the sniper's suit (as developed during the war) its miraculous function has been fairly realized.

What is a sniper's suit like? Most people have no definite notion on the subject beyond the fact that it is "camouflage" for the person. The matter, however, is easily explained, and can be made so clear that anybody may put together such a costume for his own use.

It needs no tailor's skill, goodness knows. The prime requisite of a proper suit of clothes is fit. But the sniper's suit must not fit at all. On the contrary, it must be vastly loose and baggy, not conforming in the least with the contour of the wearer. It must have no angles, for in nature angles are few.

The sniper's suit—for hunting snipe, or ducks, or what not—must be contrived and colored as to enable him to resemble as closely as possible his surroundings; to melt into them, as it were. It is made of the coarsest and cheapest kind of burlap, rubbed with mud or daubed with green or brown paint to imitate the color scheme of his immediate environment.

An essential part of it is a headpiece that can be pulled hood-fashion over head and face, the eyes of the wearer looking out through places that have been thinned for the purpose by the simple process of removing the burlap threads running horizontally. Tufts of grass or other natural vegetation growing in the immediate vicinity of the hunter's lurking place are fastened here and there to parts of his costume. He may even attach a few pebbles to it with short lengths of wire. His very gun is wrapped in a loose burlap bag, provided with a fringe of grass or leaves, leaving only the trigger and the sight free.

Now, if the hunter thus equipped were to walk about he would, of course, alarm the game. If he were merely to stand erect, he would attract attention (though immovable), because differing in form from his surroundings. But when he lies prone, and perfectly still, he becomes in appearance merely a normal irregularity in the landscape. In effect, he is invisible.

The noblest of all game animals is man. In warfare he becomes just that. During the recent conflict suits corresponding to the above description were commonly worn not only by snipers, but also by machine gunners, and by men who took part in raids across No Man's Land.

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 / 

FALSE COLORS: Art, Design and Modern Camouflage

CAMOUPEDIA: A Compendium of Research

on Art, Architecture and Camouflage

SHIP SHAPE: A Dazzle Camouflage Sourcebook