Dazzle was a type of camouflage developed by the artist Norman Wilkinson (1878-1971) in 1917, in response to the heavy losses sustained by British merchant ships to German U-boat submarines.
Dazzle camouflage involved painting the ship in contrasting colours and shapes in irregular, angular patterns. This created a distorted effect designed to deceive enemy U-boats about the vessel’s size, outline, course and speed. A small group of artists, led by Wilkinson, tested the camouflage on ship models in the basement of the Royal Academy, before sending scale drawings such as these to harbours around Britain.

This drawing is a pair with PAH0416.