During the First World War, John Everett was at first unable to sketch outdoors due to wartime security regulations, but in the spring of 1918, the Ministry of Information asked him to depict London river scenes. Everett received a permit to draw, and that summer, spent every day at the docks.
What attracted him most were the ships covered in ‘dazzle painting’. Dazzle was a type of camouflage developed by the artist Norman Wilkinson in 1917, in response to the heavy losses sustained by British merchant ships to German U-boat submarines. Everett’s dazzle pictures are among his most daring works for their sense of composition and modernity. They were first displayed at the Goupil Gallery in London in November 1918.

By depicting people at work in dry docks, Everett conveys the sheer scale of the steam ships. The bare surface of the hull reveals how the vessel was clad in sheets of metal. To cover a ship in camouflage, the initial dazzle design was marked out on the hull and superstructure in chalk, and then applied by a small team of painters under the supervision of one of Norman Wilkinson’s assistants.