Hampshire cineaste Alfred J. West: Barry Shurlock feature

DURING lockdown retired Open University IT manager David Clover has assembled a huge collection of ‘cuttings’ from the British Newspaper Archive and similar holdings in Australia and New Zealand. They all relate to the career of his great-grandfather, the pioneer Hampshire film-maker Alfred J West (1857-1937). The result, freely available online (www.ournavy.org.uk), runs to nearly 600 pages and contains reviews and advertisements from 230 titles, including the Chronicle.

It is by far the largest source of information on a pioneer little known outside specialist film history circles and demonstrates the incredible energy and resourcefulness of a man who, in 14 years before World War I, played a key role in the cultural revolution now embraced by Netflix and others.

Although Alfred was based in and around Southsea, the cuttings confirm him as a person of national and international importance in the history of film-making – in the same league as acknowledged pioneers, such as R.W. Paul, Cecil Hepworth, Birt Acres and Charles Urban.

It all started in Gosport in the mid-19th century, when carpenter George West started to make the ‘small camera boxes’ required for the wet-plate cameras of the day. Photography was a profitable business and he was soon sharing in the profits of taking portraits of the well-to-do.

By 1881, George had nine sons and daughters in the business, including Alfred, who moved on to film from award-winning still photography of yachts under sail. The full story is told in his unpublished autobiography Sea Salts and Celluloid, also accessible at www.ournavy.org.uk.

Brought up in Gosport, the home of yacht-builders Camper & Nicholson, it is hardly surprising that he started to photograph J-yachts and the other iconic sailing vessels owned by the wealthy. Cowes Week was an obvious event to cover and he soon built a reputation for taking impressive close-up shots of sleek boats under huge areas of canvas ploughing the Solent, often risking collision in a small sailboat

Another advantage of his location was that Queen Victoria made frequent trips to Osborne House via Portsmouth. Alfred took full advantage of these opportunities and showed animated films to her, the Duke of York (later George V) and other royals at Osborne and Sandringham.

Even now, to take good pictures on the water is not easy. To do so in the 1890s with an unwieldy plate camera was a major achievement. He developed ingenious devices to capture moving subjects, including a gimballed platform and an automatic shutter using an elastic band. One of his triumphs was taking still and moving pictures of Turbinia, the pioneering vessel that travelled at 35 knots and demonstrated the potential of steam turbines.

In 1913 he sold his yachting pictures to marine photographers, Beken of Cowes, who continued to market them. Their collection – many taken by West – was sold to the Brett Gallery, Midhurst. A substantial archive of ephemera is in Hove Museum and Art Gallery and other items in the Bill Douglas Cinema Museum, University of Exeter.

Clips of Alfred’s films can be played on the ‘Our Navy’ website, with links to films curated by the British Film Institute. The Wessex Sound and Film Archive, hosted by the Hampshire Record Office, Winchester, also has a small collection, including subjects such as a mock ‘Russo-Japanese War’ held as an exercise in Portsmouth Harbour and test firing of early torpedoes.

There are also films on the celebration of the centenary of the Battle of Trafalgar on HMS Victory and rare footage of Alfred in the 1930s, in his flat in Southsea, which also happened to be where the actor Peter Sellers was born.

David commented: “He had a fabulous eye for photo composition, which he did with a view-finder that was little more than a bent wire coat-hanger! I’ve discovered from clippings that he was a determined and enthusiastic self-publicist and I suspect many of the reviews of his shows were personally inspired by him.

“He had at least five teams of operators working in halls and cinemas throughout the UK and more in Australasia and Canada. There was virtually nowhere he did not go, including Jersey and Ireland. I’ve discovered many things I didn’t know, especially that he had business relationships with other important commercial film companies and that he pioneered ‘safety’ non-inflammable film as early as 1909.

“He was deeply patriotic – these days his leanings might be regarded as very ‘right wing’, but he was in tune with the spirit of the times, promoting the Navy as Britain redeveloped its maritime strength in the years before 1914. He was a significant entrepreneur and became wealthy, but I think his motivation was a patriotic one and not solely based on making a large amount of money, as he gave most of it away and died in 1937 leaving just £1,733 2s 6d – about £120,000 in today’s money.

“Later in life, after selling off the film business, for which he was never paid, he travelled round the world, and returned to farm violets and apples whilst keeping bees at Totland Bay on the Isle of Wight.”

The films that put him on the map were made into a show, Our Navy, which ran for many years in London at the Regent Street Polytechnic (now occupied by the University of Westminster) and elsewhere throughout the British Empire. As well as showing films, it included magic lantern slides, sound effects from behind a screen, music and jingoistic songs. Our Army was added in 1904 followed by Colonial and Merchant Navy themes

Alfred features in such works as John Barnes 5-volume The Beginnings of Cinema in England, 1894-1901 and Who’s Who of Victorian Cinema by Stephen Herbert and Luke McKernan, (available in an online version), which includes a biography by David Lee, founding manager of WSFA, who writes: “One of England’s pioneers in cinematography, Alfred J. West, is far less known than his contemporaries because so few of his films have survived.”

Later in life he travelled a good deal, as told in Sea Salts and Celluloid. He spent five weeks in Portugal in the footsteps of the Duke of Wellington during the Peninsular War. And he visited Australia, where it is likely that some of his work – perhaps misattributed – may survive in archives.

David Clover’s massive project entitled ‘Our Navy’ and ‘Our Army’ Press Cuttings 1881-1937, contains more than 1,000 items, all accessible from www.ournavy.org.uk. There is little doubt that it provides an important new source for assessing Alfred’s contribution to early film, even in the absence of his footage.

Despite all his achievements, and access to royalty, the only ‘letters’ Alfred ever gained after his name were from a Fellowship of the Royal Geographical Society, which, according to David, “was probably paid for after a period of ordinary membership”.

All images, courtesy of David Clover.

For more on Hampshire, visit www.hampshirearchivestrust.co.uk.

barryshurlock@gmail.com