1915 USN Documentary

The National Film and Sound Archive has an eleven minute transfer of a USN documentary from 1915. The film is incomplete, but is thought to represent the oldest available USN documentary still in existence.

Early on, the Navy had recognized the power of moving pictures and collaborated with the Biograph Company on a now-lost series of 60 short films showing sailors and officers at work. The series screened at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair and 1905 Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition in Portland before being put to use in a Midwest recruitment tour. Naval facilities and ships also figured prominently in early newsreels and narratives. The service took care to ensure that depictions presented it in a favorable light and reserved the right, for commercial films shot with official approval, to reuse them for the Navy’s own purposes.

While the full story behind the enigmatic fragment—and how it ended up in Australia—may never be known, it was clearly filmed with permission and may even have been commissioned by the Navy from a newsreel crew. The documentary was probably made between 1914 and early 1915. (The “E-2” class submarine, pictured in the opening scene, was taken out of service in 1915 and the shells mentioned in a intertitle—“It costs the U.S. government $970.00 for each 14 inch projectile fired”—were added to the naval arsenal the earlier year.) The location seems to be New York Harbor, the site of several naval reviews during this period. Indeed, given the appearance of the presidential yacht and the number of battleships bedecked with ornamental flags, it is possible that this particular show of readiness was staged for the Commander-in-Chief.