Waves Break on Bow of a Ship

1 Jan 1900
2m

A vicarious ocean-going experience.

You'll need your sea legs to watch this film, which was apparently filmed from a perilous position on the ship's mast - in rough seas. This is a nautical example of a 'phantom ride' - in which a camera is mounted on a moving vehicle - a popular genre among early filmgoers for the still-novel sensation of travel it offered. Thanks to the swelling waves, the effect when projected on a screen is rather queasier than the comparatively gentle train or tram journeys that were more typical phantom ride subjects.

Waves on Bow of a Ship was made by Warwick Trading Company, a leading British film production and distribution company between 1898-1915.

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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.