Color photography was still in it’s infancy during the First World War. There are a lot of photographs of ships. But they are always black and white. I mention this problem in my book, The Easter Egg Fleet. But there’s another aspect. Many artists today try to add color to their versions of those old pictures. The results are often not historically accurate. For example, the Mariners Museum in Newport News has a model of a ship in a WWI pattern. The ship is the SS Agwidale, and she really was painted in a pattern like that shown on the model. Check it out at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mr_t_in_dc/6713996031. Unfortunately, the colors the model maker used are not those specified by the pattern created by the Navy Camouflage Design section. I’ve pointed this out to the museum curators, but they aren’t going to change it. I believe their decision is correct, but it wouldn’t hurt to have a little printed note on the exhibit to mention that the colors are not accurate. I have a copy of the original pattern, with the correct colors listed. Here it is.
Notice the colors listed are Black, Grey-White, Blue-Grey, and Blue only.
Another place where artistic license is shown is in colorizing black and white photos of women in uniform. The standard navy neckerchief that was part of a yeoman (f) uniform was black. But some people think that coloring it red makes a more attractive picture. It may look more interesting, but it wasn’t ever red.
Wetherhorn 