Dreadnought hoax

The Dreadnought hoax was a practical joke pulled by Horace de Vere Cole in 1910. Cole tricked the Royal Navy into showing their flagship, the battleship HMS Dreadnought, to a fake delegation of Abyssinian royals. The hoax drew attention in Britain to the emergence of the Bloomsbury Group, among whom some of Cole's collaborators numbered. The hoax was a repeat of a similar impersonation that Cole and Adrian Stephen had organised while they were students at Cambridge University in 1905.

Horace de Vere Cole was born in Ireland in 1881 to a well-to-do family. He was commissioned into the Yorkshire Hussars and served in the Second Boer War, where he was seriously wounded and invalided out of service. On his return to Britain, he became an undergraduate at Trinity College, Cambridge; he studied little and spent his time entertaining and undertaking hoaxes and pranks.

One of Cole's closest friends at Trinity was Adrian Stephen, a keen sportsman and actor. Cole's biographer, Martyn Downer, considers that Stephen was a "perfect foil for ... [Cole]: someone sympathetic and encouraging yet unafraid to take him on". Stephen was the son of Leslie, the writer and critic, and Julia, the philanthropist and Pre-Raphaelite model. Adrian Stephen's elder brother, Thoby, was also at Trinity, and their sisters, Vanessa (later Vanessa Bell) and Virginia (later Virginia Woolf), would visit. After university, the four Stephen siblings became members of the Bloomsbury Group, the set of associated writers, intellectuals, philosophers and artists, many of whose members had also been at Trinity College. Cole was on the fringes of the group but never a member.

In early 1905, while in their second year at Trinity College, Cambridge, Cole and Adrian Stephen decided to use a visit to England of Sayyid Ali bin Hamud Al-Busaid, the eighth Sultan of Zanzibar, as the basis for a hoax. A plan was put together to fake a state visit of the sultan to Cambridge, although they realised that as the sultan's picture had recently appeared in the press, there was a risk the visiting sultan would be shown as a fraud. They decided that Cole would impersonate the sultan's uncle rather than the sultan. On 2 March, they sent a telegram to the Mayor of Cambridge to ask if he could arrange a suitable reception for the sultan:

The Sultan of Zanzibar will arrive today at Cambridge at 4.27 for a short visit. Could you arrange to show him buildings of interest and send carriage?
Henry Lucas, Hotel Cecil, London

The students obtained robes and turbans from the theatrical costumier Willy Clarkson, applied blackface make-up and took the train from London. A carriage met the group at Cambridge railway station and took them to the guildhall, where they were met by the mayor and town clerk. After a brief reception they were taken on a tour of the town, including some of the university's colleges; the hoaxers were seen by some of their friends and acquaintances who did not recognise them. After less than an hour they demanded to be returned to the station. As they did not want to return to London—returning from which would have meant them breaking the 10:00 pm college curfew—on arrival at the station, they ran out of a side exit and took two hansom cabs to a friend's house, where they changed back into their normal attire.

The following day Cole gave an interview to the Daily Mail about the hoax; the story appeared in the paper on 4 March 1905 and was repeated in local newspapers. The St James's Gazette considered the events "a most audacious practical joke". The Mayor wanted the students involved to be sent down, but was persuaded by the Vice-Chancellor that this would damage his reputation further.

In the early 20th century, Britain's naval fleet was seen as one of the foundations of its empire, and a reflection of the country's power and wealth. As Britain was portrayed in books, plays and popular culture as an island nation, the Royal Navy was seen as the defender of the island and its first line of defence. A leading article in The Observer in 1909 described the supremacy of the Royal Navy as "the best security for the world's peace and advancement".