This brash stunt involving Virginia Woolf, blackface, and a battleship is totally outrageous
Sneaking onto Britain’s most prized ship was never so easy
On a balmy winter day in February, 1910, six young Englishmen studied Swahili on a train. They weren’t cramming for an exam or a trip abroad, but a prank. As part of their sophisticated hoax, two were dressed as agents from the British Foreign Office, while four disguised themselves in detailed robes, prosthetic beards, and brownface—in order to pass themselves off as Abyssinian royals. On the journey from London to Portland harbor, they ordered a fraudulent telegram to be sent to the Admiralty, keeping the office abreast of the arrival of “Prince Malaken of Abbysinia [sic] and suite.” What awaited the hoaxters at Weymouth was a generous diplomatic tour of the crown jewel of the Royal Navy, the HMS Dreadnought.
The chief architect of the Dreadnought hoax was a wealthy bohemian named Horace de Vere Cole, and experienced prankster. In his university days, Cole had impersonated a royal of Zanzibar to finagle a cordial welcome and tour from the mayor of Cambridge. The stunt got him nearly expelled, but it solidified his bond to fellow student Adrian Stephen, who joined him for the Dreadnought caper.
The pair invited along four like-minded London peers, including the painter Duncan Grant (who served as emperor), a lawyer named Guy Ridley, and an author, Anthony Buxton. Stephen also enlisted his sister, Virginia, a 28-year-old writer of short fiction and periodical pieces. In a few years, Virginia Stephen would publish her debut novel, The Voyage Out, and marry one Leonard Woolf, taking his surname as her own. In the ensuing press debacle, much of Britain would hear for the first time about these brash and creative young people, who called themselves the Bloomsbury Group.
“There were a great many rivalries and intrigues in the navy. The officers like scoring off each other,” Virginia Woolf recalled in a talk about the hoax. Horace Cole had a friend on the Hawke, a rival ship to the Dreadnought, who encouraged him to commit his mischievous talents to the embarrassment of the revered boat’s crew. The ship was also a useful symbol to lampoon. Built in 1906, the Dreadnought was an object of national pride, considered proof of Britain’s naval supremacy over Germany in the years leading up to World War I. Scholars interpret the hoax as evidence of the Bloomsbury Group’s “emerging anti-military outlook,” while the battleship’s renown made the pranksters’ irreverence all the more notorious.
On February 7, 1910, the day of the hoax, Cole and company assembled at the Stephens’ home to be dressed by a theatrical costume designer. Cole and Stephen were to assume most of the talking, as the party’s “diplomatic chaperones.” They wore formal suits and hats and false facial hair. Photos, taken after the hoax, exhibit the full sophistication of the beards, robes, and brownface that Virginia and her companions wore.
“Whether [Swahili] is spoken in Abyssinia or not I do not know,” wrote Adrian Stephen in his 1936 book about the hoax (it wasn’t). But the gibberish grumblings of the pranksters were received credulously by welcoming navy officers, including the admiral and the captain. Still, the young people were understandably nervous, especially Stephen, who saw from a distance his cousin aboard the ship, and was surprised to be greeted by a fellow member of his walking club, who fortunately did not recognize him in his disguised performance.
Despite the short notice, the six were received with considerable hospitality. “Inside the station a red carpet was laid down for us to walk on, and there was a barrier in position to keep sightseers at a proper distance.” The ship had a band on deck, which, lacking the sheet music to the Abyssinian anthem, played that of Zanzibar’s in its stead. The admiral and captain showed the group around the ship, including its weaponry and radio command station. Someone even offered to fire the ship’s guns in salute to the visitors, which Stephen politely declined, privately thinking of the unnecessary business that cleaning the munitions would require of the crew. “It was hardly a question any longer of a hoax,” said Stephen about their credulous reception. “Everyone was expecting us to act as the Emperor and his suite, and it would have extremely difficult not to.”
But the pack did endure a handful of cinematically comedic close calls. One officer requested of Stephen that he ask the Abyssinian delegation a question, thrusting upon him the unexpected task of speaking their gibberish language. He managed to recite lines memorized from Homer and Virgil, garbled sufficiently to mask the classical languages.
At one point, when on the deck of the ship, it began to drizzle, which compelled Stephen to politely shuffle the powdered faces of the pranksters into the dry cabin. Eating also posed a risk to their delicate disguises, and the party declined an invitation to dinner on the grounds that the Abyssinian diet required a most fastidious preparation.
“They were tremendously polite and nice — couldn’t have been nicer,” wrote Cole in a letter right after the hoax, “one almost regretted the outrage on their hospitality.” Stephen agreed, saying “They treated us so delightfully while we were on board that I, for one, felt very uncomfortable at mocking, even in the friendliest spirit, such charming people.” On the train back to London, they convened in astonishment with how well their plot had gone, and resolved to keep the truth among them. But Cole, a lifelong prankster, saw the chance for publicity, and reached out to the press. A few days later, the costumed photo of the group appeared in the Daily Mirror, and a public frenzy ensued.
Many in the press were plainly amused by the prank, with one writer suggesting the Dreadnought be renamed the Abyssinian. Others were not in such jovial spirits. A cartoon in the Daily Mail suggested that the hoax could imperil international relations should a legitimate delegation one day be met by suspicious Britons.
Members of the Royal Navy were especially humiliated by the publicity. At least one was heckled by onlookers shouting “bunga bunga,” a phrase that the press falsely reported the delegation had used. A group of sailors made the three-plus-hour journey from Weymouth to London to administer punishment: six ceremonial lashes to Cole’s hindquarters. On a different occasion, an obsequious Duncan Grant was driven to Hampstead Heath where he accepted two, thus ending the Royal Navy’s bizarre gentlemanly campaign of retribution.
This modest, extralegal punishment was viewed as a way of not feeding the issue’s already ample publicity. Anxious members of parliament debated the meaning of the security breach, and it was said that the navy reformed its practices for accepting visitors aboard. “I am glad to think that I too have been of help to my country,” Virginia Woolf later remarked, dryly.
Just a few years later, the parties involved had moved on to greater matters. The Dreadnought would go on to be the only battleship to sink a submarine during World War I, while Virginia Woolf would publish her first masterpiece, Mrs. Dalloway, in 1925.
