Able Seaman Albert Charles Smith Phillips served in the Royal Navy from 1910 until 1923, joining the submarine service in 1913. Most notably he was awarded the Russian Order of St George for his contributions towards the sinking of the German cruiser SMS Prinz Adalbert when he was serving in submarines in the Baltic.
During Phillips’s time serving in the Baltic he, along with two other sailors, created a mould into which they smelted faulty engine bearings into the shape of an ashtray. This ashtray was rather risqué, especially for the time. It features a seemingly innocent scene of a woman leaning against a ladder in an orchard on one side, but on the opposite side of the tray the reverse of the image is depicted with her bare bottom revealed.
Undertaking creative endeavours for sailors was a common occurrence as ‘downtime’ and periods of boredom were abundant during the First World War. This was especially true of those serving within the Submarine Corps, where showing patience not only resulted in the production of art, but was itself an art form when it came to remaining undetected. One of the commanders of the British submarines during the First World War claimed to play bridge whilst at the bottom of the North Sea to pass the time it took for enemy patrols to pass over.[1]
As for the construction of this ashtray we cannot be exactly sure where it was made. The documentation detailing which submarines sailors were posted to at specific times can be vague, and men were often switched between vessels during their service. It is possible it could have been made over the winter months when submarine E.8 and E.18 (both which Phillips served in) were frozen into the port of Reval (now Tallinn) in the Gulf of Finland from November 1915 until the spring of 1916 – or the following winter at the end of 1916. [2] It is easy to imagine that this freezing cold period, where regular operations were often suspended, would result in sailors having to entertain themselves.
Another potential time it could have been made is in January 1918 when Phillips may have been serving in the vessel E.9 and visited Petrograd (the port of St. Petersburg) before leaving the Baltic to eventually return to England. Phillip’s son, George, recalled his father had said he was tied up at Leningrad (what St. Petersburg was known as from 1924 until 1991) when the tray was made. Phillips went on to transfer into the New Zealand Division of the Royal Navy in September 1920. Joining the crew of the cruiser HMS Chatham assigned to the New Zealand Station. He was discharged ashore in 1923 and settled in New Zealand.
[1] Gray, Edwyn. 2016. British Submarines at War 1914-1918. Pen & Sword Maritime. Page 30.
[2] Gray, British Submarines at War. Page 88.
Bibliography:
Gray, Edwyn. 2016. British Submarines at War 1914-1918. Pen & Sword Maritime.
By Lewis Dunster, Collections Assistant