In his nearly 30-year career with AP, photographer Dennis Lee Royle (1923-1971) covered news in Europe, Africa and Asia.

On May 20, 1971, while covering naval exercises conducted by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the helicopter he was in crashed over the English Channel. Royle was killed in the crash as were Edward Beer of the British Press Association and Guy Blanchard who was working for the American Broadcasting Company.

“It is a tragic irony that Dennis, who had been in so many dangerous spots for The Associated Press, such as the Hungarian revolution, wars in the Middle East and in India, lost his life in such an accident – but still in the pursuit of the news, as were his colleagues who died with him,” said Wes Gallagher, AP's president and general manager.

Born in England, Royle joined the Royal Air Force (RAF) in 1939 and served as a flight engineer on board the aircraft that he serviced. He was released from the RAF in 1943 after being injured in a crash landing. Royle began his first assignment at the AP on July 12, 1943 as a photo librarian in the London bureau. He progressed to caption writer and night photo editor, all the while learning the art and science of photography from veteran AP photographers Eddie Worth and Leslie Priest.

In December 1951, the world’s attention turned to the fate of the Flying Enterprise, a freighter in distress on a voyage from Hamburg to New York. Hit by a storm in late December, passengers and crew were forced to abandon ship, jumping into the cold Atlantic waters, from which they were rescued. Captain Kurt Carlsen and chief mate Kenneth Dancy stayed aboard ship, hoping to guide it to a safe harbor, but on the afternoon of January 10, 1952 as the Flying Enterprise, now listing at 90 degrees and taking water down the stack began to sink, both Dancy and Carlsen jumped into the sea from off the stack and were taken aboard the Turmoil.

The AP was there, with three staffers aboard the tug Englishman, from which they reported the sinking of the Enterprise and the final expolits of Captain Carlsen who refused to abandon ship until the last possible moment. Royle boarded the Englishman with three cameras, a Speed Graphic with a 5 1/4 inch lens, a 13-inch telephoto on a Graphic, and an 18-inch telephoto on a Graflex. The 13-inch telephoto made the final shots, the other two cameras having been knocked out by bumping agains the bulkheads.

Assigned to Africa in 1961, Royle covered African independence movements, the Congo war, the Biafran war, and the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, from his home base in Johannesburg. In his first four years in Africa he went on 58 long distance assignments on the continent. Royle was a talented writer whose bylined stories often accompanied his photos. When the South African government refused to renew his visa in 1967 he re-located to Salisbury, Rhodesia, now known as Harare, Zimbabwe, until authorities there proclaimed him a prohibited immigrant. His photos of starving children in Biafra during the Nigerian Civil War were credited with prompting relief efforts.

Royle’s work in South Africa captured both the inhumanity and absurdity of the apartheid regime. Many of the photos in this gallery focus on the ubiquitous labels that mark public spaces. In his book “House of Bondage,” the South African photographer Ernest Cole writes: “The infectious spread of apartheid into the smallest detail of daily living has made South Africa a land of signs. They are everywhere, written in English or Afrikaans… But always their purpose is the same: to spell out the almost total separation of facilities on the basis of race.”

Photo editing and text by Francesca Pitaro, AP Corporate Archives.

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