The theories which during the war resulted in all British vessels being dazzle-painted were usually not well understood by the general public. In a very interesting lecture at the Royal Society of Arts, Lieutenant-Commander Norman Wilkinson, who played so large a part in the scheme to secure the safety of our ships, explained why they were made, in one midshipman's words, to look like "a cross between a zebra and a sea-serpent off for the Dazzle-painting, said Commander Wilkinson, was calculated to produce an effect in such a way that all accepted forms of a ship were broken up by masses of strongly contrasted colour,—consequently making it a matter of difficulty for a submarine to decide on the exact course of the vessel to be attacked. The primary object in dazzle painting was to mislead the enemy when the ship was first sighted as to the correct position to take-up, for once that had been misjudged, with any boat of a speed more than ten knots there was little chance of success. After much experimenting, the striped type of design was adopted as the most satisfactory. Small models in wood were made to the scale of each ship, and studied on a prepared theatre through a submarine Periscope, various sky backgrounds being tried until the best scheme was evolved. The simpler the design the greater degree of distort tion could be achieved; and the colours mostly in use were black, white, blue, and green, either in their primary condition or mixed to various tones.
The Chairman (Sir Douglas Brownrigg), congratulating Commander Wilkinson on his lecture, remarked that when in Scapa Flow in 1918 he and other officers, seeing a dazzle-ship four hundred yards from the shore, were quite unable to decide which way she was heading.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.