26 NA2626 2 NANAVY NEWS,VY VY NEWNEE S,S, NO NOOVOVEMBER 2008VEMEMBMBBERER R 220020 8
● Men of the 1st Royal Naval Brigade toss snow balls at an internment camp in Holland in November 1914
(Q53443) and (left) Royal Marines fi ll water bottles near Ostend in August 1914 (Q53230)
Photographic
M
ORE than nine
taken by the small band of offi cial
decades after
In the fi rst of a regular series, we dip into
cameramen who joined Brooks.
the archive of the Imperial War Museum –
his death, the
(Brooks himself alternated
repository for ten million images of confl ict between the Army and Navy for
idealistic words
from the Boer War to Iraq and Afghanistan –
the rest of the war, producing
of S/Lt Rupert Brooke still to give a public airing to unseen images of a
some of the most iconic images of
inspire. century of naval warfare.
the Great War.)
Brooke died two days before
All had a singular aim.
Commonwealth forces stormed
“British photographs of the
the shores of Gallipoli.
war are principally aimed at
15in naval guns, but in a former cared little for the media and even
And it was there, in the bloody
public consumption at home and
school/orphanage/hospital behind less for photographers.
abroad,” explained Mr Proctor.
spring of 1915, that a near the principal building. “Admirals really didn’t feel they
“The Australians documented
namesake left Britons with a more It is the designated repository had to justify the Navy’s existence,
every facet of the war – they wanted
tangible, more realistic keepsake for all offi cial images of war – and their attitude to photographers
to create a historical record. And
of war. peace – produced by the three was rather aloof,” explained
the Canadians seemed rather more
The name of Lt Ernest Brooks Armed Forces. Ian Proctor, one of the IWM’s
keen to show the horrors of war.”
has faded with the passage of Today dedicated photographic photographic curators.
What you will not fi nd among
time. But not his work. It lives on branches record daily life in all Aloof or not, the Admiralty sent
British WW1 imagery are many
in books, in documentaries, and three Services. Brooks to the Dardanelles aboard
photographs of the dead, friend
in the day-to-day work of 21st But when the Great War HMS Queen Elizabeth.
especially, but also foe – public
Century sailors. engulfed Europe in 1914, things And he obviously impressed:
sensibilities in what was still
For back in 1915, Brooks were rather more haphazard. in the spring of 1916, he was
essentially Edwardian Britain were
was selected by the Admiralty There were no British employed as Britain’s very fi rst
not ready for the reality of war.
to record the great advance on offi cial photographers in 1914; offi cial war photographer on the
And you won’t fi nd too many
Constantinople. battalions employed offi cers or Western Front, documenting the
images of the Royal Navy in action
The great advance faltered, then made use of personal cameras, blooding of Kitchener’s Armies.
either.
failed – all recorded by the camera while cameramen working for The government wanted to
The great distances at which
of Brooks, Britain’s fi rst offi cial newspapers and agencies, or project images of a victorious
castles of steel grappled with each
photographer of the Great War. freelancers sold their images in volunteer army at home and
other, coupled with the length of
What began with Brooks 93 stores. aboard.
time it took to take a photograph
years ago mushroomed in the mud By today’s standards, it seems It got its images – the very fi rst in
with the cameras of the day, made
of the Somme and Passchendaele, rather macabre that shops did the series, Q1, is the famous (and
capturing the naval war tricky.
the sands of North Africa, the a lively trade in images of the much-used) shot of a ration party
And so most of our images of
grey wastes of the Atlantic, the battlefi elds and the men fi ghting of the Royal Irish Rifl es resting in the Grand Fleet in the Great War
beaches of Normandy, the jungles there, but there was an insatiable a communications trench on July are devoted to life aboard ships,
of Borneo, the dust of Iraq and appetite for news – and especially 1 1916, the fi rst day of the Somme vessels sailing into and out of
● Last Polaris missile boat
HMS Repulse returns to the
Afghanistan, more than ten million photographs – from the front. – but it didn’t get its victory. harbours, or on exercises around
Clyde from a deterrence images of war in total, all held by Former Daily Mirror And so the photographers the UK.
patrol in May 1996 (SFPU- the Imperial War Museum. photographer Ernest Brooks continued their work. Photographs from the ‘front
NE-1996-212-7-N) It is held not in the imposing was the exception, not the rule, Q1 would be followed by more line’ are rare – and many were
main museum, dominated by two employed by an Admiralty who than 40,000 other offi cial images, apparently taken by ship’s
● Gurkhas from Kluang and men from RNAS Sembawang haul a Westland Whirlwind out of a swamp near Layang
Layang in May 1955 (A33203) and (left) Have a nice can of drink and a sit down... a member of HMS Cardiff’s fl ight
deck party takes a break after a Sea Skua has been loaded on to the destroyer’s Lynx in the Falklands (FKD89)
026-027 & 40_NN_Nov.indd 1 20/10/08 10:30:43
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