Sea lions, greasepaint and the U-boat threat: Admiralty scientists turn to the music hall in 1916

Abstract

Attempts sponsored by the Admiralty's Board of Invention and Research (BIR) to train sea lions as submarine trackers from November 1916 to mid–1917, when there was considerable concern about the depredations of U–boats, involved a unique collaboration between Fellows of The Royal Society and music-hall celebrities. The official establishment, with its scientific advisers and somewhat reluctant naval representatives, met the world of music hall and circus entertainment, when sea lion ‘captains’ were called upon to assist their counterparts in the Royal Navy. Admiralty documents in the Public Record Office indicate that in 1916 Professor W.H. Bragg, F.R.S. of Section II of the BIR had been approached by ‘Captain’ Joseph Woodward, a music–hall sea lion trainer, who recommended his animals as a possible solution to the U–boat menace. Woodward's recommendation was taken seriously, and he was in due course taken on by the BIR as a consultant, provider of sea lions and experimenting participant. Experiments and trials took place in public swimming baths in Glasgow and Westminster, at Lake Bala and finally on the Solent, under the general supervision of Dr E.J. Allen, F.R.S., Director of the Marine Biological Association laboratories in Plymouth, and with the regular participation of Sir Richard Paget, Secretary of Section II, and Woodward's brother, Captain Fred. At first the aim was to train muzzled animals prior to meals to ignore fish alongside them in a tank in favour of an artificial underwater sound, after a conditioned approach to which they would be rewarded with food. Training would then be transferred to open water, using a submarine as the sound and food source, which the animals might learn to follow without the distraction of fish or of sounds other than those associated with submarines. Woodward's work consisted of a successful application of the same principle of conditioned response which Pavlov made quantifiable in his dogs, and the trials themselves represented a very unusual alliance between science and the performing arts.