Sepia Saturday 277: A Day at The (Boat) Races

I'm not really one for team sports, either as a spectator or participant, but I find I am able to rise to Sepia Saturday's image prompt on this particular occasion. In Bill Nelson's 1904 Grand Tour album which I featured here a couple of weeks ago, there is a sequence of photographs of boat races on the River Thames at Oxford.


One team pulls past the spectator barges, Ref. #09c
Nitrocellulose negative film, 3¼" x 4¼", 118-format
Image © and courtesy of Bill Nelson
If it is the famous University Boat Race between Oxford and Cambridge, which seems very likely, that traditionally takes place on the last weekend of March or the first week of April, the most recent of which was only two weeks ago - Oxford won by 20 seconds. In 1904, however, it took place on Saturday 26th March and Cambridge won by 4½ to 6 lengths (The Boat Race 1904).


Spectators watch two crews pass the Club House, Ref. #01b
Nitrocellulose negative film, 3¼" x 4¼", 118-format
Image © and courtesy of Bill Nelson
Traditionally the teams are known as the "light blues" (Cambridge) and the "dark blues" (Oxford), from the colour of their jerseys, but it doesn't look, on the face of it, as though either of these two teams are wearing dark blue. The main race is preceded by a race involving the two reserve crews, called Isis and Goldie for Oxford and Cambridge respectively, and it is possible that these photographs include both the reserve and main race.


Rowers receive some coaching, Ref. #18a
Nitrocellulose negative film, 3¼" x 4¼", 118-format
Image © and courtesy of Bill Nelson
Listed at number 7 (from the bow) in the main race in the Cambridge boat was New Zealand-born Harold Gillies, considered the father of plastic surgery for his pioneering work on facial reconstructive surgery during the Great War.


Spectators take to the water, Ref. #13a
Nitrocellulose negative film, 3¼" x 4¼", 118-format
Image © and courtesy of Bill Nelson
Once the race was over, it appears that our photographer, along with many spectators, took to the water, recording the ongoing frivolities.


Barges overflow with spectators, Ref. #01a
Nitrocellulose negative film, 3¼" x 4¼", 118-format
Image © and courtesy of Bill Nelson
I can well imagine that the day did not end without one or more of them getting a little damp. However, it is one of the younger spectators on the roof of the barge, at top left, in whom I am particularly interested.


Girl holds a No 1 Brownie box camera
Detail of negative #01a
The teenage girl with long hair wearing a straw hat is carrying a box camera and, after a lengthy comparison of this image with those illustrated in Brian Coe's Kodak Cameras: The First Hundred Years, I've decided that it is almost certainly a No 1 Brownie box camera.


No 1 Brownie camera, from 1903 Kodak Catalogue
Image courtesy of the Digitized Kodak Catalog Project

First introduced in October 1901 as a successor to the original model Brownie (1900), it sold for the grand sum of one dollar, produced 2¼" x 2¼" square prints from 117-format roll film, and was an immediate success. It isinteresting to note that of the hundreds of spectators visible in these photographs, the only one carrying a claerly identifiable camera was a young girl.



Packaging for the No 1 Brownie camera
Image © and courtesy of the National Media Museum Collection
Anyone could now afford a camera, but Eastman Kodak marketed the camera specifically towards children, inserting advertisements in popular magazines like The Saturday Evening Post and The Youth's Companion which showed even very young children using them. Even the Brownie name was based on the characters in a popular series of children's books by Canadian illustrator Palmer Cox.


Group in a rowing boat by unidentified photographer
2¼" x 2¼" mounted print, taken c. 1905, probably with a No 1 Brownie
Image © George Eastman House collection
This 2¼" x 2¼" print mounted on white card embossed with a decorative frame, fortuitously picturing a large group in a rowing boat, is from the George Eastman House collection and was probably taken with a No. 1 Brownie. I haven't been able to find many such examples online, and would appreciate hearing from readers who may have similar mounted prints in their own collections.


Oxford, Boys running, Ref. #01c
Nitrocellulose negative film, 3¼" x 4¼", 118-format
Image © and courtesy of Bill Nelson
Another negative in this sequence shows a number of male figures running, although their attire doesn't suggest that they are in a race, more as if they are in a hurry to get somewhere, perhaps to get a good position to watch the start of "The Boat Race." However, it was a dark shape in the background that caught my eye.


Detail of negative #01c
It appears to be a figure standing on a platform, next to some sort of contraption, perhaps mounted on a tripod. Could this have been a camera of some sort? Upon searching the other boat race images, I discovered that the figure/contraption/platform appeared in front of the club house in the second view as well. This time, the figure is standing behind and partly hidden by the contraption, possibly with his head under a black cloth (below).


Detail of negative #01b
My next discovery was even more exciting. While searching the web for material relating to "The Boat Race," I came across a synopsis of a short documentary film in the IMDb entitled simply, "The Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race," made in 1904 by the Charles Urban Trading Company. Charles Urban was a pioneering Anglo-American film producer who specialised in documentaries, travel and scientific films. Many of them have been "rediscovered" and are now available to view online, but sadly I haven't yet found the 1904 Boat Race.

I emailed Luke McKernan, author of Charles Urban: Pioneering the Non-fiction Film in Britain and America, 1897-1925, asking his view on the expanded images and received this informative response:

There were at least three films made of the 1904 Boat Race, by the Charles Urban Trading Company, by the Warwick Trading Company, and by the British Mutoscope and Biograph Company. Urban's film was, according to a catalogue record, filmed from the bow of the Sportsman (presumably a vessel following the race), though they would have had cameramen positioned elsewhere as well.

The blow-ups in the photographs are puzzling, because neither looks like a conventional cine camera, being much too bulky. It almost looks like a photographer's black hood, and there is an outside possibility I suppose that it could be a still camera. However, my thought on seeing the photos is that they show a camera employed by the British Mutoscope and Biograph Company, who employed 70mm film (unlike the 35mm used by Urban and Warwick) with bulky, electrically-driven cameras. An advertisement for the film states "We have secured negatives of the crews leaving Boat House, and made arrangements to take the finish of the race today". I had thought that they had ceased using 70mm by 1903, but this could be a last-gasp effort with the format.

I thought about the possibility of a still camera being used too, thinking the dark shape could be a photographer's hood, but considered the chances of something that size being used outdoors in 1904 was pretty unlikely. For the moment the identity of the cameraman, if that's what it is, will remain a mystery, but I'm very grateful to Luke McKernan for his help.

The rest of the Sepia Saturday team will likewise be featuring team sports and similar topics this week, and I suggest you you head over there to visit them before you get too carried away watching film clips on YouTube.

Sepia Saturday 217: A Camping Trip to Rival Any Other

My contributions to the weekly Sepia Saturday theme have suffered a little this summer, mainly due to the run of good weather that we've had, of which I've taken full advantage with plenty of hiking and other outdoors activity, following on from my rather lengthy excursion walking the Camino in northern Spain last year.

I could not resist Alan's image prompt this week, a black and white photograph from the Bergen Public Library's Flickr photostream depicting three classical composers Julius Röntgen, Frants Beyer and Edvard Grieg on an excursion on Mount Løvstakken in June 1900. Another image in the same sequence, and presumably taken on the same day, shows Beyer and Grieg indulging in light refreshments after their exertions.


Roosevelt on Glacier Point, Yosemite Valley, 1903
Stereographic print publ. by Underwood & Underwood
These reminded me very much of one of my favourite photographs which has been reproduced many times, but is shown here in its original format as a stereocard print published by Underwood & Underwood in 1903 (click the image for a larger version). Few of my readers will need to be informed that this was the 26th President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) at Glacier Point, Yosemite, with the Yosemite Falls in the background. I haven't yet been able to determine who took the original photograph - and there were quite a number of adventurous glass plate photographers working in the area, right back to 1859 [2] - but I did discover several similar scenes which appear to be part of the same series, and were presumably taken on the same day.


Roosevelt on Glacier Point, Yosemite Valley, 1903
Stereographic print publ. by Keystone View Company
A second pose, very similar to the first but published by Keystone, shows Roosevelt again standing on an overhanding rock at Glacier Point, with the Yosemite Valley and the Yosemite Falls forming a magnificent backdrop to the north-west. The stereophoto is titled, "President Roosevelt's Choicest Recreation - Amid Nature's Grandeur - On Glacier Point, Yosemite, Calif."


Roosevelt on Glacier Point, Yosemite Valley, 1903
Unmounted print, unknown publisher
A third version shows Roosevelt seated, rather than standing, on the overhanging rock, with the photographer facing east and the charcateristic outline of Half Dome just visible at the right hand edge of the view.


Roosevelt and Muir on Glacier Point, Yosemite Valley, 1903
Unmounted stereographic print, unknown publisher
A fourth image, also widely published as a stereophoto, shows Roosevelt and another man - the identity of that man holds the clue to why the President was there, and why this series of images has become so widely known. Much has been written about the relationship between Roosevelt and John Muir, the bearded man to his left, and I don't intend to repeat it here, except to quote some of Roosevelt's own words:

It was my good fortune to know John Muir. He had written me, even before I met him personally, expressing his regret that when Emerson came to see the Yosemite, his (emerson's) friends would not allow him to accept John Muir's invitation to spend two or three days camping with him, so as to see the giant grandeur of the place under surroundings more congenial than those of a hotel piazza or a seat on a coach. I had answered him that if ever I got in his neighborhood I should claim from him the treatment that he had wished to accord Emerson. Later, when as President I visited the Yosemite, John Muir fulfilled the promise he had at that time made to me. He met me with a couple of pack mules, as well as with riding mules for himself and myself, and a first-class packer and cook, and I spent a delightful three days and two nights with him.

Roosevelt's party at the Grizzly Giant, Mariposa Big Tree Grove, 1903
Photograph by Joseph N. LeConte

The first night we camped in a grove of giant sequoias. It was clear weather, and we lay in the open, the enormous cinnamon-colored trunks rising about us like the columns of a vaster and more beautiful cathedral than was ever conceived by any human architect ...

President Roosevelt and party, Inspiration Point, Yosemite Valley

All next day we traveled through the forest. Then a snow-storm came on, and at night we camped on the edge of the Yosemite, under the branches of a magnificent silver fir, and very warm and comfortable we were, and a very good dinner we had before we rolled up in our tarpaulins and blankets for the night ...

Roosevelt and Muir with two Rangers, Yosemite Valley

The following day we went down into the Yosemite and through the valley, camping in the bottom among the timber ... John Muir talked even better than he wrote. His greatest influence was always upon those who were brought into personal contact with him.

Muir's three nights with Roosevelt at Yosemite in May 1903 has been referred to in a rather grandiose fashion as perhaps "the most significant camping trip in conservation history," with some justification. Muir, an ardent conservationist, prolific author and activist, had been visiting and writing about Yosemite for three and a half decades. He was the first to suggest that Yosemite's U-shaped valleys were carved out by glaciers, in stark contrast to the contemporary view of their origin as the result of catastrophic earthquakes. He had befriended naturalist author Ralph Waldo Emerson, was a co-founder and first president of the Sierra Club, an associate of literary naturalist John Burroughs, and was a close friend of influential scientist Joseph LeConte.

"Only by going alone in silence, without baggage, can one truly get into the heart of the wilderness. All other travel is mere dust and hotels and baggage and chatter." – John Muir in a letter to his wife Louie in July 1888

"There! empty your heads of all vanity, and look ... Yes, I pottered around here ten years, and you think you can see it all in four days." - John Muir to John Burroughs in 1909


John Muir on a 1964 U.S. commemorative stamp
Ranger-naturalist Richard J. Hartesveldt wrote, in an article published in Yosemite Nature Notes in 1955:

This unusual meeting of two great conservationists had a strong influence upon the formulation in our government's land and resources policy ... The prelude to this meeting began a few years earlier when forests which had been set aside by Presidents Harrison and Cleveland were endangered by pressure from commercial interests who wanted the Congress to release them from Federal control. To John Muir, through his vivid writings, goes much of the credit for preventing the passage of such legislation.

John Muir, Preservationist
Celebrate the Century U.S. commemmorative stamp, 1998

The President became interested in the conservation attitudes of John Muir by reading Muir's enthusiastic writings. He indicated to the famed naturalist through California Senator Chester Rowell that he desired to make a trip to Yosemite for the express purpose of "talking conservation" with him ... After receiving a personal letter from Roosevelt, [Muir] wrote ... "An influential man from Washington wants to make a trip into the Sierra with me, and I might be able to do some forest good in freely talking around the campfire."

The President arrived dressed for the business at hand in his rough hunting clothes. He and Muir left the main party of dignitaries and slept on the ground at night, once in the snow, which delighted the President. The conversations around their Sierra campfires would probably fill several volumes, since both were prolific talkers. Although we shall never know all that transpired on this memorial outing, there is much evidence of the good which resulted from it.

John Muir featured on the California state quarter, 2005

John Muir was emphatic about the need for legislation to prevent archeological ruins from being destroyed by "pot hunters" and other collectors. The Petrified Forest and the Grand Canyon were foremost among specific areas mentioned. Perhaps it was at this time that the two conceived a workable plan which would vest the President with the necessary power to set apart as national monuments areas deemed nationally significant. The purpose was, of course, to save time when areas were in immediate danger of invasion, and also to circumvent opposition in Congress which might prevent many such areas from being established. The legislation was enacted in 1906 and is known today as the Antiquities Act.

Redwoods at Muir Woods National Monument, November 2013
Image Copyright © Brett Payne
Sadly I didn't have enough time during my recent brief stay in California to visit Yosemite, as it's been on my bucket list far longer than the term has actually been in existence (i.e. 2006). I felt it deserved more than the couple of days I had available, so it will have to wait for another time. I did, however, get a chance for a quick visit to Muir Woods National Monument - declared as such by Roosevelt in 1908, and named after John Muir at the request of the donors, William and Elizabeth Kent - an old-growth coastal redwood forest close to Mount Tamalpais, with my long time friends Bob and Veronique. Thanks, Bob and Vero, next time we'll do Yosemite.

References

Underwood & Underwood (Copyright, 1903) Theodore Roosevelt and John Muir on Glacier Point, Yosemite Valley, California, in 1903, stereograph (unmounted), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Online Catalog (PPOC)

The First Yosemite Photographers / Yosemite Photographers In The Early Days ... Incredible Challenges But Amazing Results, including A Thousand Words by Bill and Mary Hood, by undiscovered-yosemite.com.

President Roosevelt and party, Inspiration Point, Yosemite Valley, California, photographic print, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Online Catalog (PPOC)

Muir, John (1871) Yosemite Glaciers, New York Tribune, 5 December 1871, reproduced online by the Sierra Club.

Roosevelt, Theodore (1913) In Yosemite with John Muir, from An Autobiography (1913), excerpted from Chapter IX. Outdoors and Indoors, reproduced online by the Sierra Club.

Roosevelt, Theodore (1915) John Muir: An Appreciation, Outlook, vol. 109, pp. 27-28, 16 January 1915, reproduced online by the Sierra Club.

John Muir and John Muir's Influences, by the National Park Service.

John Muir (1838-1914) and Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919), The National Parks, America's Best Idea, a film by PBS.

Geologic Map of Yosemite Valley, from Geologic Map of Yosemite National Park and Vicinity, California, U.S. Geological Survey Miscellaneous Investigations Series Map I-1874 by N. King Huber, Paul C. Bateman, and Clyde Wahrhaftig, publ. 1989, from the United States Geological Survey.

Sierra Club Historic Photographs, from the Sierra Club William E. Colby Memorial Library.

Barrus, Clara (1920) John Burroughs - Boy And Man, Chapter XVII: Work And Play In Later Years, from The Catskill Archive

Hartesveldt, Richard J. (1955) Roosevelt And Muir - Conservationists, in Yosemite Nature Notes, Vol. XXXIV, No. 11 (PDF from Yosemite Online Library), p.132-136, November 1955, article reproduced by undiscovered-yosemite.com.

Sepia Saturday 208: An early call for Father Christmas

Among the same set of lantern slides which I have featured previously in two previous Sepia Saturday posts (A Return Trip to Dovedale and Ready with the Bulls-Eye) is this pair of group images. I estimated the other photographs in the collection to have been taken c.1900 to 1910, and identified at least one, and possibly two, of them as having been taken in Derbyshire.



The first is a semi-formal group portrait of 17 women who appear to be dressed as maids or house servants. However something about the uniformity of their mob caps suggests to me that they may be dressed for some kind of play, pantomime or variety performance, rather than being employees in a very grand house. I guess that the house would have to be a lot bigger than Downton Abbey to have that number of youngish female servants in residence.



Whether these 34 children and their teacher (top right) have just attended a pantomime performance or a party is not clear, but the presence of a visitor from the North Pole (top left) places the event very firmly in December. The development of Santa's image as a plump, jovial, white-haired and bearded elderly man dressed in red with white fur trim largely happened in North America in the late 1800s (with the not inconsiderable help of caricaturist Thomas Nast), and then underwent a reverse migration back to Europe. Given that this image was probably taken in the United Kingdom in the first decade of the twentieth century, I think it must be a very early representation of Father Christmas. He wears a mob cap, rather than the now standard long, floppy pointed cap, but is otherwise much as we see him today.


"Merry Old Santa Claus," by Thomas Nast
from Harper's Weekly, 1 Jan 1881
That's all I have for Saturday Sepians this week. Have a great Christmas holiday and we'll see you again in the New Year. In the interim, if you're in need of some light entertainment, check out the other sepian contributions.

Sepia Saturday 207: Happy Days at Blackpool

I'm back after a fifteen week break from Sepia Saturday, during which time I visited England, France, Spain and California, and walked the Camino de Santiago, a pilgrim route stretching for just under a thousand kilometres across northern Spain, from St Jean Pied de Port to Santiago de Compostela and Finisterre. I was also delighted to meet and spend a day getting to know charming and genial fellow Sepians Little Nell and Caminante. Marilyn wrote of our exploring the enchanting city of Burgos together in Beguiled by Burgos. I'm very grateful that she and John went somewhat out of their way to facilitate this very successful meeting of like minds, and hope that we can do it again some time, somewhere.

Writing an article or two about the trip, which may include a few carefully selected photographs from my walk through historic northern Spain, will have to wait for when I have more time. This week I'd like to share some more images from a collection of glass plate and sheet film negatives that I've featured before here on Photo-Sleuth: SS179: Fun on the Sands - The Pleasure Palaces of Southport and SS188: The Cornwall Coast in Colour. The first of these two articles dealt with photographs taken by an amateur photographer during a visit to Southport, Lancashire, probably in 1913 or 1914.

It was on a similar trip, probably at around the same time, that the photographer took several scenes of the seaside attractions of Blackpool. It may even have been during the same trip; he or she might have taken a passage there on one of the steam boats from the end of Southport Pier. There are five negatives of views identified as from Blackpool, three of which I've included here.


Central Pier, Tower and Ferris Wheel, Blackpool, c.1913-1914
Quarter-plate glass negative (108 x 80mm, 4¼" x 3¼")
by an unidentified amateur photographer
Image © and collection of Brett Payne
This negative shows evidence of "in camera" light leakage or over-exposure along the left hand edge, and is suffering the ravages of time in the form of oxidation or silvering of the photographic emulsion, but the main part of the image is still in good condition. The view is of the Central Pier with the Blackpool Tower, theatre building, Ferris Wheel and Promenade from left to right, taken at low tide from a point on the beach a couple of hundred metres south of the pier.



I don't yet know who the photographer was, but he or she was no slouch when it came to recording holiday trips. By the second decade of the twentieth century, not only were there cheaper and easier roll film cameras (box and folding) available, rather than the fiddly plate or cartridge-backed model he used, but this was also the heyday of the picture postcard. The selection included in the slideshow above are typical of the large range of views which were readily available for visitors to purchase, and give a good impression the wide variety of activities available at the Blackpool waterfront.


Rainbow Wheel, Scenic Railway & Helter Skelter Lighthouse, Pleasure Beach, Blackpool, c.1913-1914
Quarter-plate glass negative (108 x 80mm, 4¼" x 3¼")
by an unidentified amateur photographer
Image © and collection of Brett Payne
In this large collection there are also two negatives depicting illuminated night scenes. Using postcards from that era, both are identifiable as having been taken at Pleasure Beach in Blackpool. I previously wrote about Charles Howell operating a photographic studio at Pleasure Beach between the two World Wars. Pictured in the negatives are a Rainbow Wheel, the Scenic Railway, the Helter Skelter Lighthouse (all above) and the Casino (below).


Casino, Pleasure Beach, Blackpool, c.1913-1914
Quarter-plate glass negative (108 x 80mm, 4¼" x 3¼")
by an unidentified amateur photographer
Image © and collection of Brett Payne


A series of contemporary postcards shows the same attractions, both by day and by night. In 1879 Blackpool became the first municipality in the world to have electric street lights installed, along the Promenade. The accompanying pageants were the forerunner of the town's famous Illuminations.


Fun on the Sands, 1914
I've also found several silent movie clips from 1914, 1926 and 1934 which give a very good feel for the various attractions on Blackpool's waterfront. The first clip, Fun on the Sands, includes the Senic Railway ride and a panning shot of the Rainbow Wheel, built in 1912, and the Helter Skelter Lighthouse. For further details of the rides and other attractions, click through the links to the YouTube web site.


Happy Days at Blackpool 1926 (Part 1)


Happy Days at Blackpool 1926 (Part 2)


Blackpool Illuminations 1934
This brings me to a small request to fellow Saturday Sepians and other regular readers of this blog. I am have started a small project studying seaside photography in Blackpool, and am looking for as wide a variety of seaside portraits as I can find. If you have any in your family or personal collections that you'd care to share, I would very much appreciate scans of them, please.

In particular, I'm looking for the following types of photographs:

• any early daguerreotypes, ambrotypes or tintypes taken in Blackpool
• formal portraits from any of Blackpool's numerous studios, from the 1840s/1850s through to the present day, including ambrotypes, tintypes, cartes de visite, cabinet cards, postcards and a variety of paper print formats
• portraits taken by itinerant beach photographers, of relaxing on the beach, playing games or riding the ever present donkeys
• walking pictures, also known as "walkies," taken by professional street photographers, perhaps taken along the Promenade or elsewhere in Blackpool
• amateur photographs taken on or near to Blackpool's piers or beaches, particularly those with recognisable landmarks in the background, such as one of the piers, the tower, or fairground attractions.

They don't have to be wonderful quality - there are several other aspects of the photographs that I'm interested in, more than having spectacular examples of the genre. Permission would of course be sought if I wanted to use any of the images online or in a publication, and all such use would be fully acknowledged. If you have any photos that you think might be of interest, please leave a comment below with contact details or email me.

For more sepian delights I can recommend a visit to the remainder of this week's Sepia Saturday contributers.

Sepia Saturday 190: Come into the Garden Maud

The difficulty with providing an image for use as a Sepia Saturday prompt, particularly one that you've used previously, is that it's a little trickier to produce an interesting follow on article. Hence I'm going off on a somewhat different tack this week. Feel free to play the embedded sound track while you're reading, and it will hopefully provide an appropriate background to the photos.


Unidentified couple and baby with garden tent, c.1893-1898
Cabinet card (roughly trimmed) by unidentified photographer
Image © and collection of Brett Payne

Come into the garden, Maud,
For the black bat, Night, has flown,
Come into the garden, Maud,
I am here at the gate alone;
And the woodbine spices are wafted abroad,
And the musk of the roses blown.

For a breeze of morning moves,
And the planet of Love is on high,
Beginning to faint in the light that she loves
On a bed of daffodil sky,
To faint in the light of the sun she loves,
To faint in his light, and to die.

Maud; A Monodrama
by Alfred Lord Tennyson

When Alfred - for surely that must be his name - charmed Maud with those silken words, it seems unlikely that he envisaged such an outcome: tea with Maud, but also a very alert baby, and a photographer in attendance to record the event. He is not amused!


The Miller house, shop and post office, c.1905-1910
Image republished from old postcard by unknown publisher
It wasn't just the faintly ridiculous pose which attracted me to the cabinet card, purchased on eBay, but also the tent. It is similar to one just visible in this image of the Weston Underwood garden of my great-great-grandparents John and Eliza Miller. When I last used this image, in the story of John's father James Miller, drainage man, I suggested that the tent might have been "used as a children's playhouse." Perhaps they were a common appearance in late Victorian and Edwardian gardens, and primarily protected tea drinkers from the harsh summer sun?

For more picnics and garden gatherings, please pay a visit to the 190th edition of Sepia Saturday.

Sepia Saturday 188: The Cornwall Coast in Colour

A couple of months ago I purchased a large collection of glass plate negatives, and used several of these to illustrate a piece I wrote for Sepia Saturday about a visit to the Pleasure Palaces of Southport. In the second of a planned series of articles about this intriguing collection we return to the English coastline with six colour positive glass plate slides taken by an unknown amateur photographer.

The six slides each measure 89 x 63mm (3½" x 2½"), with the printable area roughly 3¼" x 2¼", corresponding to the standard quarter-plate format used by most amateur glass plate cameras in the early to mid-1900s. All six are coastal views but, like the rest of the collection, none have anything to indicate where they might have been taken, despite having a very English feel to them.



It was this view that provided the first clue. As a trained geologist I'm pretty familiar with landscapes and outcrop patterns produced by a variety of rock types, and this headland with its blocky nature produced by weathering of rectangular joint patterns seems to me very typical of granite.


Geology of Cornwall and Devon
portion of Geological Survey "Ten-Mile" Map (1957)
Image © and courtesy of the Ordnance Survey
From what I remember of my A-Level geology studies the only place in England that you're likely to find granite right on the coast is in Cornwall, as the portion of the Geological Survey map for that area shows rather dramatically. The red blobs are granite intrusions, and the blob at the far left covers the land around Penzance, St Ives and Land's End.


Land's End, Cornwall
View Larger Map
That still leaves a fair distance of coastline to search, but if you're visiting Cornwall, what better place to take a photograph than at Land's End, that most touristic and memorable of spots, so that's where I looked first. You can search this coastline very effectively using either Google Maps or Google Earth. Noticing that the view in that first slide had some rocks off shore, with perhaps a lighthouse on one of them, I used Google Maps to come up with this view of rocky islets a few hundred metres to the west of Land's End.


Land's End, Cornwall
Image © Tom Hurley and courtesy of 360 Cities
Google Earth gives you the opportunity to "fly through" the landscape in virtual 3-D, and to access "spherical panoramic" images hosted by 360 Cities. One of these fortuitously shows almost the exact view as in the slide, taken from Dr Syntax's Head with the Longships islets and lighthouse, as well as Kettle's Bottom rock, in the distance.



Walking a few metres out to the headland and turning right to face north-east gives us the scene shown in the second of the slides (above). The rugged coastline is identifiable by the characteristic sea arches, and a hotel building just visible on the horizon. These two panoramas can be viewed via browser on the 360 Cities web site here and here.


Harbour View A
The next three slides show a harbour, taken from different spots around the shoreline. This image is the most interesting, and in some ways frustrating, of the three. A large crowd gathers around something almost hidden from the view of the photographer. In the right foreground a neatly dressed woman pats the neck of a horse, complete with full collar and harness attached to the shafts of the cart, the buckboard of which is just visible through the crowd. Clearly the people are jostling for a closer view of whatever is on the cart. One man, wearing rolled up shirt sleeves and a flat cap, is standing at what is probably the tailgate of the cart, and has the attention of many in the crowd. At far left of the foreground, standing on some kind of platform, are three teenagers including two girls with dark blue school blazer, one with an unidentifiable crest.

A lorry with large drums piled on the back is parked between the crowd and the water. Almost hidden behind the cab of the truck, several boys play in waist-deep water. The harbour is scattered with boats at anchor, ranging from small pleasure craft to larger commercial fishing boats. A long stone wharf or breakwater extends almost across the entire width of the photo, with two lighthouses, a large one centrally placed and a smaller one at the distal end, marking one side of the harbour entrance. A couple of dozen cars, mostly black, are parked along the wharf, reminding one of that well worn quote often attributed to Henry Ford, "You can have any colour as long as it's black." The car at the far right looks like an early Morris Minor, first manufactured in 1948. Also arrayed intermittently down the wharf are a number of people standing and sitting, obviously enjoying the warm sunshine.


Harbour View B
This view of the harbour includes the shore-end of the wharf and part of a town, with a number of boats resting at anchor and several dinghies tethered by ropes and lying on the sand in the foreground exposed by an outgoing tide.


Harbour View C
A third view of the harbour is taken from the opposite direction, the photographer standing on the shore somewhere in the middle of the previous view. Boats are at anchor or under way in the small harbour, at least four of them with visible occupants, and several men, women and children can be seen on foot investigating the intertidal sand flats.

The slopes on the other side of the harbour are clad with a substantial number of buildings, indicating a sizeable town, and a smaller wharf protecting the other side of the harbour is visible in the left middle ground. At far left in the middle ground, beyond a rocky point, a beach crowded with pleasure seekers can just be made out.


St Ives, Cornwall, December 2005 (see in Google Maps)
It took a little searching, but I eventually found the harbour using Google Earth. It is St Ives, situated on the northern Cornwall coast, a town well serviced with Streetview images, which meant I could locate three perfect shots for a "Now and Then" series.


St Ives Harbour View A - May 2009
Image © and courtesy of Google Earth
The first view was clearly taken near the top of this boat ramp, and I suspect the cart contains a catch of fish, crab or lobster recently hauled onshore from one of the fishing boats now at anchor in the harbour.


St Ives Harbour View B - May 2009
Image © and courtesy of Google Earth

St Ives Harbour View C - May 2009
Image © and courtesy of Google Earth
The second and third views indicate that the photographer was walking around the harbour as the tide went out.



The last of the six slides depicts a beach at low tide, filled with dozens of people enjoying the sunny afternoon. Some recline in their deck chairs, reading newspapers, chatting to friends or watching the children playing. The photographer has caught a young boy having just bowled a ball at his sister, and she's in the act of batting it away. Two young ladies bravely sunbathe in the lea of a rocky outcrop. Another group of children are digging in the sand. One young man or woman scans the sky anxiously, wondering how much longer the sun will last or perhaps keeping a lookout for pesky seagulls.


View of Newquay Harbour entrance from Towan Beach
Image © buthe79 and courtesy of Panoramio
This has been identified as Town Beach at Newquay, which recent images show to have remained popular with holidaymakers. The rocks here are Devonian sandstones, by the way.

The clothing fashions in these photographs, particularly those worn by the women, appear to me to be typical of the post-Second World War era, i.e. the late 1940s and early to mid-1950s, illustrated by the images on Geoff Caulton's PhotoDetective web page for this period.


Detail of St Ives Harbour View A
Image © and collection of Brett Payne
It was when zooming in on these images that I noticed a very unusual feature, one that I've never previously noticed in any of the colour images that I own. Although not visible to the naked eye, the colours are actually made up of three differently coloured sets of diagonal lines. According to Robert Hirsch's history of colour photography (Hirsch, 2011), colour plates made up of a "checkerboard of red, green, and blue elements" were produced by the Finlay Colour process, also known as the Thames Colour Screen, which was originally patented in 1906 but abandoned after the Great War. It was subsequently re-introduced in the late 1920s and early 1930s.

The Paget Dry Plate process, "patented in Britain in 1912 by G.S. Whitfield and first marketed by the Paget Prize Plate Company in 1913," was a very similar technique (Wikipedia).

The system used two glass plates, one of which was the colour screen plate while the other was a standard black-and-white negative plate. The colour screen plate comprised a series of red, green and blue filters, laid down in a regular pattern of lines to form a réseau, or matrix ... Transparency positives could be made from the system's panchromatic negatives by contact printing; these positives were then bound in register with a colour viewing screen of the same type as used for exposure, to reproduce the image in colour.

James Morley has a small collection of early colour positive slides produced by the Paget process here. My examples, however, appear to have been taken considerably later, probably in the very late 1940s or early 1950s.

For more coastal excursions, in various hues, visit the other participants in this week's Sepia Saturday effort.

References

Hirsch, Robert (2011) A Concise History of Color Photography, in Exploring Color Photography, 5th Edition, Focal Press.

Elusive colour: Paget colour system, on Captured in Colour, Australian War Memorial.