The Launch of H.M.S. Albion

This is an old brief news film, or "actuality", of the launch of the battleship HMS Albion on 21 June 1898 at London into the river Thames. As the battleship slid into the river, it caused a stage crammed with spectators to collapse and throw them into the water—killing 34 or so people (sources vary on the precise death toll). The tragedy wasn't captured in this film, though. What we do see here is a very good view from an altitude of 150 feet of the launch of the massive ship, but the tragedy happened just outside of the camera's view.

There were, however, two other cameramen filming the event. One of them was Birt Acres, who may've captured the stage collapse, but who didn't release his film (or films), which is now lost. Acres wrote about how he found it unseemly to distribute such a disaster film, and he was very critical of R.W. Paul, the other filmmaker at the event and who did release his pictures of the tragedy. Acres's attacks seem to have had more to due with the acrimonious end to Acres and Paul's professional relationship, though. Together, they had been England's first native filmmakers and producers—making such pictures as the popular "Rough Sea at Dover" (1895).

It's interesting to have seen both Paul's and E.P. Prestwich's films of the launch. Paul's film, unlike Prestwich's single-shot scene (this one) of just the launch of the battleship, includes four shots of before the launch and of rescue efforts afterwards, but neither cameraman captured the stage collapse. Nevertheless, Paul's film was quite a controversial scoop, and its four shots make it noteworthy in the history of motion picture technique. (For more on Paul's film, see my comments on the IMDb pages for "The Launch of the H.M.S. Albion".) Without the backstory, however, Prestwich's film is a seemingly ordinary primitive news picture—albeit from a good camera position and a clear print perhaps enhanced by the fact that it was photographed on 60mm film.

The Prestwich Manufacturing Company was a small player in the early cinema of England. Paul, on the other hand, is one of the most important figures of the period, and he's responsible for many developments in film technique and narrative. The Prestwich Manufacturing Company was mainly concerned with producing cinematographic equipment. They only produced about 20 films in 1898—although they also sold other producers' pictures. (Main Source: John Barnes's "Pioneers of the British Film", the third volume of the informative book series "The Beginnings of the Cinema in England 1894-1901".)

This is a remarkable film. In it, Robert W. Paul captured a genuine tragedy--one of the earliest such instances in the history of news film. Originally, Paul planned to film an ordinary news, or actuality, film of the launch of a battleship, the H.M.S. Albion, which the Duchess of York christened. The majority of films at this time were such actualitiés--motion pictures were mainly a news source, or, rather, a visual elaboration to the print media. Indeed, at least two other film crews joined Paul in filming this event. During the launch of the ship, a stage holding sightseers collapsed, which dropped hundreds into the River Thames and ended 34 lives.

Paul's film, "The Launch of H.M.S. Albion" (otherwise known as "Disaster"), doesn't capture the instant of the stage collapse, nor even a very good shot of the launch of the battleship. One of the other filmmakers there that day E.P. Prestwich, for the Prestwich Manufacturing Company, did, however, capture an outstanding view of the launch, from an altitude of 150 feet and a considerable distance to encompass the entire ship within the frame as it slid into the river. John Barnes has reprinted several frames from this film in his third volume of "The Beginnings of the Cinema in England 1894-1901". (EDIT: The BFI has now put Prestwich's film on the web, including at Youtube.) The catastrophe barely escaped the camera's view, though. The other film producer known to have been at Blackwall that day was Birt Acres, who is said to have had two cameras to cover the event.

Paul's film includes four shots, which makes it one of the earliest multi-shot films. Although not the first multi-shot film, as James White, for instance, had already experimented with multi-shot actualitiés, and Paul had produced what has been credited as the earliest multi-shot fiction film the same year as this film with "Come Along Do!", "The Launch of H.M.S. Albion" is nevertheless an elaborately constructed film for its time. As Stephen Bottomore pointed out in "Shots in the Dark - The Real Origins of Film Editing", some of the earliest edited films were nonfiction actualitiés, which would require the filmmaker to momentarily stop filming and, perhaps, change camera positions in order to keep their non-staged (that is, at least, not primarily staged for the camera) subjects interesting and within frame. Additionally, these longer actuality films were generally available to exhibitors in segments, which allowed them to edit their own programs, as well as to keep costs down. Indeed, the Warwick Trading Company made this 80-feet long film available to exhibitors in 40-feet halves.

The film begins with a moving shot from a motorboat of the battleship. The second shot is of a woman on the boat, who may be Paul's wife and who probably appeared in many of Paul's films, although this is uncertain. The third shot is of rescue efforts. The final shot shows a man pointing at the camera, and it seems that someone else is waving their hand in front of the camera. It seems these people, who are trying to save people from the waters, are agitated by the camera's presence.

The last shot of the film points to an interesting controversy over the ethics of filming such a tragedy. In today's media, we are accustomed to such coverage and generally accept it as ethical and desired. Television news is based on such coverage. The coverage of the terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001 has been the most poignant example, but also such events as the Hindenburg disaster. Additionally, we are used to television coverage of natural disasters, wars and other tragic events, which often are not so much of a surprise. This type of coverage has its beginnings in the fire genre of early films, most of which were actuality films covering or even chasing firemen as they chased down and put out blazing buildings.

In 1898, the filming and especially the exhibition of disaster footage were unprecedented. Thus, it was that Paul's film met with some controversy. The main attacker of Paul's role was Acres, who, as aforementioned, was one of the three producers known to be at the event. Underneath the attacks was Acres history with Paul, as he had invented a camera with Paul, and together they were England's earliest native filmmakers and producers--making such films as the popular "Rough Sea at Dover" (1895). Their relationship ended acrimoniously, though, and the controversy here wasn't the first time the two had a public spat.

In a letter to the "Daily Chronicle" (reprinted by Barnes), Acres wrote: "Having come to my knowledge that someone had taken an animated photograph of the poor sufferers struggling in the water, I wish to dissociate myself in the most emphatic manner from the producers of these photographs; and further, I have decided to suppress my films of the launch." Paul responded by claiming that he assisted in the rescue of 25 submerged persons, and that his filming didn't interfere with the rescue efforts. He also said that a collection was made for the sufferers of the disaster at the film's exhibition on June 22, the day after the disaster, and that he hoped similar donations would result from his sending the film to local exhibitors.

On a final note, this film has only recently resurfaced; when Barnes wrote about the film in 1983, it was presumed lost. More than a decade after making the film, when Paul ceased film production, he destroyed the negatives to his films. Since then, the British Film Institute, presumably with a print handed down from one of those local exhibitors, has released this film on DVD as part of a collection of Paul's surviving films.

One cannot overestimate the importance of "accidents" in so-called actuality films. They were always intended as drama but also quite often acted as comic relief. So the Lumières were already aware of the importance of bicycles colliding (in all but they very first version of Sortie de l'Usine) or crashing (Bataille de neige). They are actually a good gauge of the development of th use of narrative in such films. A marvelous example is Elfelt's Kørsel med Grønlandske Hunde (1897) which is generally referred to rather absurdly as an "actuality" simply because the character in it is a real-life factor but which is very very clearly a fiction - an arranged gag (and a beautifully arranged one too).

Elfelt, who was also court photographer, had quite a cheeky sense of humour (there is a film of his showing naughty ombres chinoises of women getting into their bathing costumes, a shot that became a standard in later US comic shorts) and there is a marvellous little film of the King of Denmark and his entourage cycling where again - the viewer is waiting for it - there is an accident. Whether or not Elfelt arranged this or simply waited for it, he has in effect rendered the King of Denmark the star of an early slapstick comedy.

Fire and other non-trivial disasters occur in films but are rarely genuine, although Elfelt also in 1897 shot what is quite clearly genuine footage of a fire. The train collision in the 1904 Edison film Railroad Smashup was on the other hand a completely staged event (by arrangement with the railroad company)while Booth' 1900 A Railroad Wreck made use of a model.

These are all composed views (the last only being on the borderline) not genuine actualities. Capturing a genuine disaster at a real event was something rather different. Such films are genuine actualities (they were accurately called "topicalities" in English before the French term was borrowed by some pretentious idiot of a critic and misapplied to any non-fictional film). One can see from this the absurdity of applying the term "actuality" to both kinds of film. One (the composed view) can be made at any time and in any place and can involve whatever manipulation the film-maker pleases; the other (the topicality) is necessarily made at one particular time and in one particular place and the film-maker's options are more limited (although he or she can of course to some extent choose placement and angling). Unlike in a composed view, the film-maker is here reliant on pure chance to provide a dramatic scoop.

This did however occur with some regularity. In 1896 while filming the coronation of Tsar Nicholas of Russia, the Lumière team (in full strength for the event - the first really major actualities ever to be filmed) apparently caught the disastrous collapse of one of the stands but they were not allowed to use the film which was confiscated. An interesting later example is Portuguese film-maker Alfredo Nunes de Matos' O Naufrágio do 'Veronese' (1913) where he happened to be on hand at the time when the liner was wrecked off the Spanish coast although. like the film here, his film concentrated on the efforts to save the survivors. Since audiences - rightly or wrongly - love disasters, the short film was a major international success and it was on the strength of it that De Matos expanded his Invicta Films to produce some of the first Portuguese feature films.

Robert Paul is a largely forgotten name today, but he was a major pioneer of British cinema, and was quick to grasp the commercial potential of cinema in ways that better known pioneers such as William Friese-Greene were not. He was more of a mechanic than a filmmaker making, with Birt Acres, his own camera on which to shoot films in 1895, and also Britain's first projector, the Animatograph, with which to screen them in 1896. Early in the 20th century he had a custom-made studio built in Muswell Hill.

This is the infamous (at the time) British disaster film – probably the country's first ever – which fuelled the simmering feud between Paul and his former partner and bitter rival, Birt Acres. It was filmed in June 1898, and chronicles, as its title suggests, the launching of HMS Albion. Perhaps the fact that the Duchess of York was unable to smash the bottle against the ship's hull should have served as an omen, because when the ship finally rumbled down into the water, its' entry created a mini tidal wave that swept a section of the crowd into the water and 38 people subsequently drowned.

It isn't all that clear what's going on to be honest, but the second half of the film appears to show a lot of confused men in boats, possibly trying to row out to save people. Birt Acres criticised Paul for filming this, and claimed that he was too busy trying to save lives to continue filming.