Submitted by Dr. Daria on
February 7, 1910 -
It was an awesome display of Great Britain’s seapower. Line upon line of battleships and cruisers of the Home and Atlantic Fleets lay at anchor across the wide sweep of Weymouth Bay in Dorsetshire. In their midst loomed the vast bulk of the HMS Dreadnaught, the Royal Navy’s mightiest battleship.
The ship was properly and flamboyantly decorated with colorful flags and bunting in honor of the impending visit of a group of Abssynian princes accompanied by a high ranking Foreign Office representative and interpreter.
Protocol was strictly observed and the visitors, self described and proclaimed as “Emperors of Abssynia (now Ethiopia),” were piped aboard and welcomed by officers in full dress uniforms. Naval ingenuity quickly overcame the ignorance regarding the flag and national anthem of Abssynia and, instead, the standard of Zanzibar was run up and the band substituted the Zanzibar national anthem. The guests were too polite to comment, in fact they had nothing but admiration and accolades for everything they saw. At select moments they threw their arms up in the air and shouted. “Bunga! Bunga!” in approval.
According to Virginia Woolf’s gender-bending novel Orlando—the Mirror described the “Abyssinians” thus:
All the princes wore vari-coloured silk sashes as turbans, set off with diamond aigrettes, white gibbah tunics, over which were cast rich flowing robes and round their necks were suspended gold chains and jeweled necklaces . . . They also all wore patent leather boots which, Oriental fashion, tapered to a point, the ends projecting fully six inches beyond the toes. White gloves covered the princes’ hands, and over the gloved fingers, they wore gold wedding rings – heavy, plain circlets, which looked very impressive.
The only glitch of the day was the fact that the Admiral refused to provide prayer mats for sunset devotions of the illustrious guests. Embarrassment was avoided by not sounding the sunset bugle call, thus abolishing sunset for that day.
At the end of the visit, crowds milled around the departing train at Weymouth Station as the guests waited to make their journey to London. It was noted that the chief prince had his face turned away as he waved his last farewell to the crowd from the window of the train. While this may have been construed as rude, the real reason was that he had sneezed and blown half of his mustache off his face.
That sneeze almost gave away one of the most audacious hoaxes planned and executed in the history of trickery. The culprit? William Horace de Vere Cole, the grand practical joker of his time. Cole was a wealthy man about town. He had a lively mind and superb planning ability and liked to exploit these talents through the execution of outrageous and often elaborate hoaxes.
The “princes” who trod the decks in elaborate costumes and make-up were Anthony Buxton, well known as a public school and university cricketer; Duncan Grant, an artist; Guy Ridley, a judge’s son; Virginia Woolf, the novelist, who played a slender prince; and her brother Adrian, who posed as the party’s German interpreter. Herbert Cholmondeley, the man from the Foreign Office, was Cole himself.
The hoax began when he sent a telegram to the ship telling the crew to expect a visit from some North African dignitaries. On the morning of the visit, Cole donned his morning dress and went to the railroad station announcing himself as Cholmondeley from the Foreign Office and proceeded to demand a special train to take the princes to Weymouth. He also demanded a special committee to see them off. The station master protested but agreed. Meanwhile, another conspirator sent a telegram in the name of the Foreign Office to the admiral of the fleet ordering him to set up facilities for the distinguished visitors.
When planning what would later become known as The Dreadnaught Affair he decided that it would be impossible for the “princes” to learn Abssynian. So he ordered visiting cards to be printed in Swalhili and instructed his fellow hoaxers to make up a language as they went along. Once on board, the group spoke in accented Latin (quoting the Aeneid) and gibberish. Woolf kept quiet so as to disguise her gender. One of the officers on the ship was a cousin of Virginia and Adrian, but he failed to recognize them.
He had also persuaded Willy Clarkson, actress Sarah Bernhardt’s make-up man to disguise the party. Willy warned him, however, that any eating by the hoaxers would ruin the make-up. That warning obviously caused complications later. It was noted that only the man from the Foreign Office and the German interpreter partook of food heartily while the princes abstained. When Cole was asked about the princes’ lack of appetite he explained they were on a strict diet having only two meals a day of which they had already had their quota.
In a recently discovered letter, Cole wrote to a friend that the hoax was “glorious” and “shriekingly funny.” The group intended to mock what they saw as an outmoded Victorian imperialism, and they succeeded, at least in the popular press. The Mirror published the cartoon above and the Royal Navy was a laughingstock for weeks afterward. None of this pseudo-racist pranksterism (which reflected just as badly on the officers) struck the actual Emperor of Ethiopia—Menelik II—as particularly funny. When he visited England later that year, he was taunted in the streets by children shouting “Bunga! Bunga!” and denied permission to inspect the navy’s fleet for fear that his visit might cause further embarrassment.
Hoaxes have been around for centuries, created by people as jokes, or for profit or attention. And as crazy as some of them seem in hindsight, people are always willing to buy into them. Maybebelieving in seemingly unbelievable things is part of the human psyche. Or maybe we just like to believe in whatever scientists and experts don't. Whatever the reason, don't think you'll never be fooled. Because sages and fools alike have been tricked. Hoaxes are meant to fool the world—and some people fall for them. Would you?
Resources:
Hoaxes, Frauds and Forgeries, The Dreadnaught Hoax ~ Reader’s Digest
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