Starboard Side and Details of 5075 Tanker, Showing Camouflage

Naval architect Griffith Baily Coale produced this technical drawing for the U.S. Navy during World War I, documenting the starboard profile and structural details of a military tanker vessel. The design illustrates the ship's camouflage scheme—a pattern of contrasting black and pale sections meant to disrupt the vessel's visual outline at sea. The drawing combines elevation views with cross-sectional studies of the bridge, superstructure, and deck arrangements, rendered in the precise orthographic projection standard to naval engineering. Coale's meticulous draftsmanship captures both the functional geometry of wartime naval construction and the experimental visual strategies employed to protect merchant and military ships from enemy observation.