Before I embark on mapping this territory, I think I should initially give Doggerland a (provisional) identity.
The flag is based on a section of the dazzle on the SS War Drake, built in Glasgow in 1918. A dazzle-painted model of the ship is held by the Riverside Museum.
In a letter to The Times in 1919, Norman Wilkinson, the inventor of dazzle, described its purpose as follows.
“Dazzle Painting,” so called officially, had one purpose in view only, viz., to upset a submarine commander’s estimate of a vessel’s course when carrying out an attack with torpedo.
Camouflage by outdoing the movement of the water: it seems apt for a nation whose centre is the sea and whose lands are reclaimed from it.
The design is subject to change.
- Norman Wilkinson, “Dazzle painting – Principles of camouflage at sea”, letter to The Times, 9 June 1919.
- “‘Dazzled’ ships – How artists cheated the U-boat”, The Times, 6 December 1918.
- Clydebuilt ships database: SS War Drake