The Royal Navy had an ambivalent attitude toward ship camouflage during the First World War. There were attempts to use contrasting blotches of color to defeat range finding early in the war, but the Admiralty rejected the idea. It’s likely that there was a fer of collisions that might be even more damaging than hostile fire. The idea was used at Gallipoli, and abandoned after that. When Germany resumed unrestricted submarine warfare in 1917 a reserve officer came forward with an idea to use irregular sections of various colors to obscure features of the ship and to conceal her course and speed. This idea was found to have some merit and quickly adopted for merchant shipping. When convoys began operation the dazzle effect camouflage was extended to ships that were used to escort the convoys. The following pictures are of models in my 1:1200 collection that illustrate patterns that were actually used.
Wetherhorn 