Waves Breaking on a Pier

1 Jan 1896
Silent
1m

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

This is most likely to have been taken by or for RW Paul in 1896 perhaps at the time of the legendary storm that destroyed the Chain Pier while the Palace Pier - the structure we see here - was still under construction. Visitors are playing 'chicken' with the waves, running backwards and forwards as they crash over the wall.

Tags

From the 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.