Something Rich & Strange

Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange’

Shakespeare, The Tempest

This series of collodion chemigrams imagines the underwater grave of the SS Fircrest, torpedoed on her return from Newfoundland to the Tees in August 1940. Loaded with 8,000 tonnes of Bell Island iron ore, the ship sunk immediately with all lives lost. Eighty years on, natural forces continue the wrecking process, microbes colonise and consume as the ship suffers a sea change, gradually returning to its elemental form.

During WW2, the British Merchant Navy was the lifeline which kept the nation supplied with food, fuel and raw materials necessary to sustain and defend itself. With ships mostly unarmed and poorly protected, North Atlantic crossings were perilous, and between 1940 and 1941, the deadliest period of the Battle of the Atlantic, almost 800 merchant ships were sunk, with the loss of some 16,654 crew.

The plates are made in commemoration of the 40-strong crew of the Fircrest, whose grave lies in the waters of the North Atlantic, 23 miles off the Butt of Lewis.

Ambrotype. Silver & Collodion on Glass