Dazzle Ship Jersey

The project is part of Jersey’s official commemorations of the centenary of the First World War. Kindly supported by the World War One Centenary Working Group’s Art and Community Fund, managed by the Jersey Arts Trust.

Dazzle Ships

Dazzle camouflage was used extensively during the First World War as a means of making it difficult for the enemy to target ships accurately. The idea was not to hide the ships, but to paint them in such a way that their appearance was optically distorted, so that it was difficult for a submarine to rapidly calculate the course a ship was traveling on, it’s speed and to know from what angle to attack.
Over 2000 ships were painted in this way and although there was no proof during WW1 that dazzle helped ships avoid U-boat attacks, crews reported feeling safer serving on board dazzle vessels.

Tugboat Elektra

The design for Elektra, a 1953/4 ex-US Army tugboat, is an original version of dazzle camouflage devised by Jersey artist Ian Rolls and painted with the help of other local artists as part of the Skipton Art Series 2015.
The concept is based on distorting form, a consistent theme in the work of Ian Rolls, so that the tugboat appears crumpled with strong linear elements reinforcing the play of light and dark to create false planes. A single red line descends in a twisting spiral from the funnel, wraps itself around the vessel and dips below the waterline to merge with the solid red of the lower hull. The symbolism of sinking ships but conversely the rising out of the red field of war to a higher place is implicit. Either way, the design is a mark of remembrance for all those lost beneath the waves in the “Great War”.

design by Ian Rolls
www.ianrolls.co.uk

Materials kindly supplied by Normans Ltd.