Dazzle On The Foggy Mersey

Dazzle camouflage, aka as dazzle painting, was used extensively on ships in WW1 and consisted of complex patterns of geometric shapes in contrasting colours, interrupting and intersecting each other. Dazzle camouflage works by making it difficult to estimate a target’s range, speed and heading. Dazzle was intended more to mislead the enemy as to the correct position to take up than actually to miss his shot when firing.

A Mersey ferry has been treated to a dazzle makeover as part of plans to commemorate the WW1 centenary. The Snowdrop has been re-painted in a unique design created by Sir Peter Blake, the amous ‘Pop artist’ behind the cover of the Beatles’ Sgt Pepper album.

Today, Good Friday, has been miserable, overcast, rainy and foggy, so a perfect day to go down to the River Mersey and photograph the Snowdrop emerging from the foggy river gloom, as the dazzled warships would have done in the Atlantic and North Sea. Hope you like my image of the Dazzled Snowdrop. By the way, I have not tweaked this, the fantastic colours contrasted against the grey gloom is exactly as it was this afternoon.