The Art of Photojournalism: Image of the Month
Spithead Fleet Review, 15th June 1953. Daily Mail, by Herbert Mason
By Alan Sparrow
June 1953: Gordon Richards won his first Derby at the 28th attempt onboard favourite Pinza; in May, Blackpool FC led by hero Stanley Matthews beat Bolton Wanderers 3-1 in the FA Cup Final at Wembley; and in August the England Cricket team captained by Len Hutton celebrated a victory over the Australian tourists to claim back the Ashes for the first time in 20 years.
Names and events from a bygone time and that now seem so distant.
On June 2nd of that year Queen Elizabeth had been crowned at Westminster Abbey and 129 heads of state from the Commonwealth came to London to celebrate the coronation. As we look back, it seems like the empire at its peak when the UK had a place in the world second to none.
But there was change ahead, and it was no more apparent than with this photograph from the Spithead Coronation Fleet Review on June 15th, 1953.
To celebrate the coronation, the Royal Navy paraded 197 ships, accompanied by ships from the Commonwealth and more from other nations including the Soviet Union and The United States. The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh reviewed the fleet from the deck of the frigate HMS Surprise, and it took two-and-a-half hours to review all 300 vessels.
This photograph was taken by Herbert Mason, a staff photographer for the Daily Mail.
Mason has a wonderful catalogue of work, including the iconic image of St Paul’s Cathedral in the Blitz of 1940 surrounded by smoke after an attack by the Luftwaffe during the Second World War, our image of the month in December 2025 https://www.artsindustry.co.uk/feature/3443-the-art-of-photojournalism-image-of-the-month-dec25.
Mason was born in 1903 in Great Yarmouth the son of Walter Mason who ran a photography business on the seafront and worked for the Yarmouth Mercury. He joined the Daily Mail in the 1930s as a general news photographer covering all types of stories. After the Blitz he became an official photographer in the Royal Navy, sailing to Murmansk with Russian convoys as well as to Malta and Sicily.
He returned to the Mail after the war and became one of their chief photographers covering events such as the wedding of film star Angela Lansbury in 1949, the coronation of Queen Elizabeth 11, and the conflict in Suez in 1956 as well as sporting events, fashion and the trial of Derek Bentley.
After the war Britain’s fortunes were desperate and the UK was forced to seek loans from the USA and Canada, and austerity took its toll so that by the end of the 1960s. both empire and fleet had gone.
After the UK had finally paid off the loans in 2006, Ed Balls, then Economic Secretary to the Treasury, said: “We honour our commitments to the USA and Canada now as they honoured their commitments to us all those years ago."
At the start of the Second World War the Royal Navy was the largest in the world with over 1400 vessels deployed around the globe to defend The Commonwealth and British interests. It now has approximately 63 vessels. Numbers vary according to the criteria but this 2025 figure includes submarines and HMS Victory, now ashore at Portsmouth as a popular tourist attraction but still formally in service.
And so, as the sun set on the British Empire, so it set on the Royal Navy
Herbert Mason died in 1964. You can see more of his photographs at https://tinyurl.com/3zycytha