HMS President Under Tow

Aerial photography of the dazzle painted hull of HMS President (1918) under tow on the tidal Thames, passing beneath the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge.

Three Royal Navy warships survive from the First World War. President is the only one of them that spent her service in the Atlantic as a Q ship, disguised as a merchantman so that a U boat would surface to attack her with gunfire rather than spend a torpedo. We photographed her under tow on 17 July 2026, going down the river. The superstructure is gone, the deck is stripped back to plate and framing, and the hull still carries the dazzle scheme the artist Tobias Rehberger painted on her in 2014 for the 14-18 NOW commission. From the air the pattern does exactly what dazzle was designed to do, which is make the shape hard to read. It is only when the tow line comes into frame, running forward and taut, that the eye resolves which end is the bow. The second frame places her under the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge. A 1918 hull, under tow, beneath the newest of the Thames crossings, is the kind of juxtaposition the river hands you once and does not repeat. Nobody commissioned this. We knew the tow was happening and we were in position for it.