The SS Jerseymoor is an exquisite woodcut of 1918, a classic image for a Vorticist artist like Wadsworth who helped
in the design of 'dazzle camouflage' during WW1
In 1917 Edward Wadsworth was hired to oversee the application of 'dazzle' patterning to ships in the Liverpool and
Bristol dockyards. Dazzle camouflage was devised as a means of frustrating
the attempts of German U‐boat
commanders to calculate the exact course and speed of an allied merchantman. By breaking up the outline of the
hull with irregular patterns painted in stark colours, a ship became more difficult to target accurately, reducing its
chances
of a direct and fatal hit by torpedo. During 1918 nearly 2500 ships were being painted at any one time and
the results of this dazzle camouflage were successful to the war effort and something to which Wadsworth was very
proud.
For a Vorticist artist these 'dazzle' ships with their cubist informed patterning
were an obvious subject matter. In 'S.S.
Jerseymoor' Wadsworth created a pictorial equivalent of the 'dazzle', conflating the diverging diagonals of the
barrels in the foreground with the striped ship, rigging, warehouses and cranes in the middle‐distance. The result is
dynamic and visually disorientating, perhaps not too dissimilar in effect to the view of a dazzled
ship glimpsed from a
U‐boat periscope.
