I just came into possession of several boxes of old family photos. In
one of them, I found a manila envelope containing photos that had been
taken aboard the HMS Skirmisher during the battle of Jutland. (My
maternal grandfater served on this destroyer escort). Two or three
dramatic shots of depth charges blowing up U-boats, and one taken just
as a torpedo struck a ship immediately aft of HMS Skirmisher (*huge*
explosion). Several photos of other ships involved in the battle, and a
couple of shots of HMS Clan McVeigh in various stages of sinking.

One of the more interesting photos from a social commentary standpoint
and of interest to naval history buffs shows a group of sailors
standing around a pile of clothing, etc, on deck. The handwritten
caption on the back of the photo says, "sale of a dead man's effects,"
and it does appear that an auction could be in progress or about to
begin. (I assume this was not during the actual battle). Obviously back
about 90 years ago there wasn't any effort to send things home to the
family, and if your shipmate was killed in battle you would have an
opportunity to bid on his belongings. (It would be nice to think that
whatever money was raised from the sale would have been sent to the
surviving family, rather than escheat to the Admiralty.).

Another interesting photo, from a historical perspective, shows a group
of sailors gathered around a couple of very large maps (no, not charts-
continental maps). At first I wondered what they were doing, but upon
enlarging the photo a bit I noticed that the top of the maps read "The
Daily Mail".
Obviously the newspaper (the Mail) was including large maps of mainland
Europe in some of their issues in those days, and the sailors are
following the progress of the ground war.

A couple of snippets of "flavor" from the British Navy, WWI.