“The eager amateur photographers amongst the crew”: HMS Dauntless in the 1930s

By Pat Ellingham, British Empire and Commonwealth Collection volunteer

I’ve just completed a virtual voyage round the coastline of the Americas, popping into the East and West Indies and navigating the Panama Canal twice. All this is thanks to Able Seaman Hislop. He compiled an album of over 300 photographs during his time on the Royal Navy Cruiser HMS Dauntless, as she patrolled the America and West Indies Station between 1930 and 1932.

The album was my latest project as a volunteer at the British Empire and Commonwealth Collection (BECC). The Royal Navy had established the America and West Indies Station in 1745 to counter French ambitions in North America. It continued through all the changes to come (including American independence) until it was disestablished in 1956.

I began to catalogue the photographs, each page devoted to one of the ship’s ports of call. The crisp black and white photographs were fascinating to look at, tantalising moments frozen in time. From Panama to Peru, they depicted canal locks, totem poles, glaciers, zeppelins, gold mines, equator crossings and sunsets. But as no other documents had come with the album there was a frustrating lack of background information.

My great stroke of luck was when I found a website compiled by the family of Frank Sutton Taylor.

Whilst researching Frank’s wartime links with HMS Dauntless, the family came across an album of over 200 snapshots taken by Able Seaman W Fox, who was also a member of the crew of Dauntless on the America and West Indies Station 1930 – 1932.

As I compared the website with BECC’s album, it was thrilling to see that abundant background detail was suddenly available. I even found the name of Able Seaman A Hislop himself on a crew list on the site!

Frank Sutton Taylor’s family also discovered a Commission Book for the cruise. This is an informal account of a naval voyage, with photographs and text. It became possible to provide background detail and dates for each of Hislop’s ports of call by referencing the Commission Book. It even refers to “the eager amateur photographers amongst the crew.” Were Able Seamen Fox and Hislop amongst these? It’s a mystery we may never solve.

The Commission Book brings to life a rowdy evening enjoyed at the sober looking Esquimault Hotel, and the Prohibition-era speakeasies near San Francisco’s Main Street. In the Falkland Islands it notes that an old ship had once run aground nearby, called the SS Great Britain! But the photographs of Vancouver became cloaked in gloom for me when I read of the drowning of two Able Seamen whose skiff capsized on return from shore leave.

I’ve found working on this project fascinating.

This handsome collection of photographs records a past era when Britain really did have confidence that it ruled the waves. But with hindsight we take a different view of the Graf Zeppelin flying from Germany to Brazil, the plantations in Tobago and Costa Rica, and the Indian indentured workers carrying a child to a funeral in Trinidad.

Above all, as a challenge to global confidence, I think of the images of the great Mendenhall Glacier, which has retreated by over 1.5 miles since HMS Dauntless moored in Juneau in 1930.

Images:

• HMS Dauntless on passage through the Panama Canal, May 1930 (ref. 2012/010/8)
• View across skyscrapers in San Francisco, September 1931 (ref. 2012/010/74)
• Cart load of sugarcane pulled by a bullock on a sugar plantation, January 1931 (ref. 2012/010/109)
• Close up of the statue of Christ under construction at Rio de Janeiro, October 1931 (ref. 2012/010/223)