Collection

Sea Wave Films

The 'sea wave' genre might be one of the more surprising genres to come out of early film. But for Victorian audiences there was something hypnotic about these compact studies of movement.

Surely most of us, if we've ever stood before the sea have found ourselves transfixed by the rhythms of gently lapping waves. The violent churn of a really rough sea gives us something else again - a real sense of the ocean's magnificent, sometimes alarming power.

11 videos in this collection

Mesmerising film of sea waves on the north east coast of England.

Rough Sea at Roker (1901)

  • Roker
  • 1901
Worthing waves at us in this mesmerising early film

Incoming Tide

  • Worthing
  • 1898

Waves Break on Bow of a Ship

  • 1900
Waves crash onto a jetty on the Kentish shoreline in one of Britain's earliest surviving films

Rough Sea at Dover

  • 1895

Rough Sea

  • 1900

Rough Sea

  • 1900
Intrepid tourists brave the great waves breaking on the marina wall at Brighton

Waves Breaking on a Pier

  • 1896

Seawaves No. 1

  • 1898

Seawaves No. 2

  • 1898

Waves Breaking on the Sea Shore

  • 1898

ROUGH SEAS BREAKING ON ROCKS

  • 1899