William Dring (1904-90) earned his reputation as a fine draughtsman and portrait painter while studying under Henry Tonks at the Slade School of Art between 1922 and 1925. He worked as a teacher of drawing and painting at the Southampton School of Art until 1940 when he was employed by the War Artist Advisory Committee, first as official war artist to the Admiralty and later to the Air Ministry. He made a large number of portrait drawings of individuals and groups, all remarkable for their informality. Dring travelled extensively to complete his commissions. The drawing is always precise and carefully modelled using pastel, a medium in which he specialised, and which allowed him to capture the likeness and spirit of his subjects quickly and under a variety of circumstances.

This large, ambitious pastel of 1943 demonstrates Dring's skilful use of the medium and his ability to make drawings of complicated technical subjects. Dring manufactured this scene by combining portraits of the crew of HMS ‘Stubborn’ taken from life with photographs of the machinery and interior of the control room, supplied to him by the Ministry of Information.

‘Stand by the Tubes’ is the order to get ready to fire torpedoes, and each crewmember is depicted carrying out the task they would have done in such a situation. Dring’s correspondence with the War Artists Advisory Committee states the identity or role of each crew member depicted here. Lieutenant Duff, Captain of the ‘Stubborn’ between December 1942 and July 1944, is depicted in the foreground looking up the periscope. Behind him is the 1st Lieutenant, on whose right is the ‘bearing reader’ slouching against a piper and gazing at the depth gauge. Sitting in front of the ‘bearing reader’ are two coxswains, or hydroplane operators; the man in white is the Chief Petty Officer and the other is the Leading Seaman. The two men behind this group wearing headphones are the ‘listeners’. The only clue that this scene is not completely true to life is the brightness of the control room. In a genuine attack situation the light levels were likely to be very low, possibly even red, in order to reduce the amount of light that would escape from the periscope and give away their position.

Launched in 1942, HMS ‘Stubborn’ made two unsuccessful attacks on German convoys until February 1944 when she successfully torpedoed the German merchant ships ‘Makki Faulbaum’ and ‘Felix D’, sinking the former and damaging the latter. Following this the ‘Stubborn’ made several more unsuccessful attacks, one of which left her so badly damaged that she sank hundreds of feet and had to blow her ballast in order to get back to the surface. After undergoing intensive repairs, the ‘Stubborn’ was transferred to the Pacific Far East where she was successful in sinking several Japanese vessels.