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William Thompson- 100 years of underwater photography?
by
Victor Adam
Reproduced
from in focus 49 (Sep.
1993)
This
year [1993] celebrates 50 years of SCUBA diving but is it
really 100 years since the first underwater photograph was
taken? The French and others make much of the photograph taken
by Frenchman Louis Boutan of a hard hat diver taken in 1893.
However, the first underwater photograph known was actually
taken by an Englishman by the name of William Thompson in
Dorset in 1856! True Thompson didn't actually dive to take
his photograph, he lowered his housed plate camera to the
seabed in Weymouth Bay and operated the shutter from a boat
anchored over the site, but he was the first to take an underwater
photograph as Victor Adam's reporting in the Dorset Countryside
Vol. 2 No. 2 recalls:-
William
Thompson was born at Lake House, Hamworthy, on 22 June 1822,
and grew up to be a man of many talents. Eldest son of a wealthy
father, he completed his education in France before returning
to live at Yarrells, Lychett Minster, the house that his father
had caused to be built which he named after the eminent naturalist
William Yarrell.
In
1847 William Thompson married Sarah Slade, a member of a well-known
Poole family of Newfoundland merchants. Soon after the marriage,
the couple set up house where at 11 Frederick Place, Weymouth,
Thompson practised as a solicitor.
Apart
from his profession (to which his financial circumstances
being what they were devoted no great proportion of his time)
Thompson had many interests. He was the owner of a yawl of
104 tons, named the "Waif", and a 12 ton cutter named "Feather
Star", both of which were used for trawling and dredging in
Weymouth Bay. He was a member of the Royal Thames Yacht Club
and later became a founder member of the Dorset Yacht Club.
NATURAL
HISTORIAN
Soon
after his arrival in Weymouth Thompson's interest was attracted
by the great wealth of marine life abounding in the waters
off the Dorset coast. The naturalist Philip Henry Gosse wrote
of having had many interesting meetings with him and set it
on record that Thompson was the discoverer of several new
species of anemones and seaweeds. Gosse also described one
of Thompson's experiments in the conservation of marine life,
referring to the seaweed known as Peacock's Tail, Gosse wrote
that "my friend Mr Thompson ... has endeavoured to propagate
this pretty alga with every success: collecting the fronds
from their native site when fully ripe, he scattered them
in similar situations all along the shore, so that now, under
Sandsfoot Castle and on the ledges between this and Byng Cliff
and in the little bight of the rocks below the Northe there
are what I may call flourishing gardens of (them), fully established
and needing no further care for their perpetuity.
Gosse's
book The Aquarium, an Unveiling of the Wonders of the Deep
Sea appeared in 1854, at a time when the setting up of indoor
marine aquaria was becoming immensely popular. In it he described
Thompson as being willing and well fitted to procuring and
supplying, on reasonable terms, specimens for either public
or private collections.
In
1856 a heated discussion was raging as to whether the Dorset
County Museum and the Dorchester Reading Room, which shared
the same building, should part company. In a letter to the
Dorset County Chronicle Thompson came out strongly in favour
of their splitting up. "I am anxious", he wrote, "to present
a series of marine objects from the coast of the County, but
am prevented by want of room and of the proper cases, and
both of these wants are caused by the Reading Room. Gaps in
the surviving acquisition books of the Dorset County Museum
make it impossible to say for certain whether Thompson's offer
was accepted but it is perhaps it is significant that when,
a few years later, he moved with his family to 3 Gloucester
Row, he converted some stables at the back of the house into
his own private museum.
In
1860 Thompson contributed an account of the fishing prospects
at Weymouth to the Field and an article on shrimps to the
Dorset County Chronicle. He was also a contributor, from time
to time, to the periodical Land and Water.
Thompson's
expert knowledge was widely recognised. He supplied information
to Gwyn Jeffreys for his book on the British Mollusca, and
J.C.Mansell-Pleydell acknowledged his assistance in his Molluscs
of Dorset.
As
an associate member of the British Archaeological Association,
Thompson was invited to serve on the local committee set up
to organise the Annual Congress of that body_held at Weymouth
in August 1871.
Ornithology
was another of Thompson's interests and he made many notes
and lists of Dorset birds, probably with the intention of
eventually writing a book on the subject.
COUNCILOR
& ALDERMAN
Thompson
was for eleven years a member of the Weymouth Town council,
serving during the latter part of that time as an alderman.
But his many other interests began to interfere with his aldermanic
duties and in 1876, after some plain speaking on the matter
by his colleagues, he tendered his resignation. As the local
newspaper later put it "For many years he was an alderman
of the borough, but paid more attention to natural history
and sporting, especially in matters relating to coursing,
than he did to municipal questions ..". A cup inscribed as
being "The Lulworth Cup for Aged Greyhounds" was won in 1868
by one of Thompson's dogs and is now in the collection of
one of his descendants.
Oddly
enough, it was not Thompson's interest in natural history
that led him to take the world's first underwater photograph.
One
stormy day Thompson and a friend named Kenyon found themselves
weather-bound for several hours at the Portland Ferry Bridge
House. They were seated in a room that looked out towards
the bridge itself, through whose arches they could see the
Fleet water running like a mill stream. Thompson began to
consider the effects the great force of the water must be
having on the piers of the bridge; he envisaged the possibility
of extensive underwater damage and the difficulties and expense
that would be entailed in sending a diver down to discover
what repairs would be necessary. It was then that the idea
occurred to him that, in such an event, a camera might be
of considerable assistance.
UNDERWATER
PHOTOGRAPHER
With
Thompson, to think was to act. He already owned a camera which
he was in the habit of using in conjunction with his natural
history studies. A carpenter now made him a wooden box large
enough to contain the camera. The front of the box was made
of plate glass and on the outside of the front there was a
heavily weighted shutter, hinged at the top, that could be
raised by a long string attached to it. Thumbscrews secured
the back of the box so that when the camera had been placed
in it, it could be made (Thompson hoped) reasonably watertight.
The box was fitted on an iron tripod and provided with a rope
for lowering it into the sea and pulling it up again.
So
far, so good. The box was ready. The next problem concerned
the camera itself. Thompson's camera took a plate measuring
5 inches by 4 inches, which he prepared using the collodion
process. This meant that the liquid chemical had to be poured
on to the plate, and be exposed and developed all within a
matter of an hour or so. Following the procedure usual at
the time, Thompson set up a small tent, on Weymouth beach,
and inside it prepared a plate and put it in his camera. He
then, under cover of a black cloth, placed the camera in the
box, making sure that its lens was against the plate glass,
and screwed on the back.
The
next step was to lower the box into the sea. For the site
of his experiment Thompson chose what he described as "a nook
in the bay of Weymouth which is bounded by a ridge of rocks
(where the area within is of sand and boulders and thickly
clothed with many species of seaweeds".
Thompson
and his friend Kenyon, having rowed out a sufficient distance
from the beach, lowered the box into 18 feet of water. When
he was sure that the apparatus was standing upright on the
bottom, he pulled the string that raised the hinged shutter.
Thompson made two attempts that day. For the first he allowed
an exposure time of five minutes but found that the plate
having been developed registered nothing.
For
his second attempt he doubled the exposure time. Although
by then the light had deteriorated, he obtained a reasonable
satisfactory negative, from which he made a print on which
it was possible faintly to discern the outlines of boulders
and seaweed. Water had leaked into the camera but this, Thompson
was pleased to see, had not seriously affected the quality
of the picture. He also noted with surprise that the image
had not been inverted, and came to the conclusion that the
thick plate glass in front of the lens must have acted as
a reversing mirror.
Thompson
later designed a better apparatus, but he then lost interest
and pursued the matter no further. His friend William Penney
of Poole, who was a chemist, and a naturalist of some note,
persuaded him to send an account of his experiment to be printed
in the Journal of the Society of Arts, otherwise there would
probably have been no record of it in existence today.
Although
Thompson often used his camera to take still life photographs
of fishes and other marine subjects that he had dredged from
the bay, he thought of underwater photography only as a useful
aid in underwater engineering. It is clear that he never imagined
a time when future generations might be able to use a similar
process to take photographs of marine life in situ. Yet some
of the finest examples of underwater photographs have been
taken in recent years along the Dorset coast within a few
miles of the spot where, in 1856, Thompson lowered his camera
into the water in a nook in Weymouth Bay.
William
Thompson died at 3 Gloucester Row on 15 April 1879, and was
remembered by his family and fellow townsmen as having been
a kind, genial and affable son of Dorset. He lies with his
wife and father and other members of the family in a vault
near the entrance to the graveyard at Wyke Regis. From the
hill above, one can look out across the Bay that Thompson
loved so well, and beneath whose waters he took the world's
first underwater photograph.
Lake
House at Hamworthy was rebuilt long since, and now serves
as Officers Mess for the Royal Marines stationed there.
At
Weymouth, no. 3 Gloucester Row has also been rebuilt. No.
11 Frederick Place, a most attractive late Georgian terrace
house (it was in fact built in the reign of William IV), appears
outwardly much as it must have looked when Thompson, carrying
the results of his momentous experiment, climbed the steps
leading to its front door.
Thompson's
name appears in the history of photography together with the
names of two other men of Dorset birth: John Pouncy of Dorchester,
the first man to discover a practical method by which photographs
could be reproduced in printing ink; and William Henry Fox
Talbot, the father of modern photography.
The
Peacock's Tail sea-weed still flourishes in Weymouth Bay and
the pieces of it sometimes found washed up on Weymouth beach
may perhaps be regarded as constituting another of William
Thompson's memorials.
Reproduced
from in focus 49. Sep. 93
See
also www.thehds.com/publications/thompson.htm
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