Written by Erskine Childers, subtitled "a record of secret service", and published in 1903, this book has been on my horizon since 2020, when our pandemic-enforced sojourn in Norfolk had me looking into the story of local notable Sir Edgar Speyer, who fell foul of the spy mania that was sweeping Britain at the time.

My audio-version was superbly read by Anton Lesser, who gave us a really plausible version of that clipped, rushed mode of speaking that often characterizes the language of the English upper classes.

The story is quite simple. Intrepid yachtsman Arthur Davies, who has been sailing his small craft, the Dulcibella, around the sandbanks and islands of East Friesland, invites Charles Carruthers, who is an old college friend, and currently at a loose end at the Foreign Office, to join him aboard for a few weeks.


Exploring our own sandy inlets in Borneo last week, I couldn't help thinking of this book... See this account for some pictures of the real area

Carruthers is more a blazer-and-crew type of yachtsman, but he soon finds himself intoxicated by Davies's adventurous brand of sailing. He comes to suspect, though, that his friend is hiding something. And sure enough, Davies eventually divulges that he suspects a German yacht-owner named Dollmann tried to kill him during a bad storm by luring him into a dangerous passage. Davies, who is already interested in charting this coast ("in the event of war it seems to me that every inch of it would be important, sand and all"), is now also exercised by the question of why he should be a target. He has come to the conclusion that Dollmann is an Englishman masquerading as a German, and is involved in some scheme that he did not want Davies to know about. Complicating matters still further is that Davies is a little sweet on Dollmann's daughter... Led up the garden path by various German representatives (including the urbane Commander von Bruening), who feed the young men stories about salvaging buried treasure, they eventually stumble upon the truth: All the mysterious processes that von Bruening and Dollmann are engaged in are bent towards the goal of launching an invasion of England. At the end, our intrepid pair manage to spirit Dollmann away (while the other key protagonists are stuck on a sandbank). He commits suicide, but his daughter (wholly innocent) accompanies Davies and Carruthers to England, and eventually -- we presume -- to marriage, "but our personal history is of no concern to the outside world".

This is all presented as a narrative written by Carruthers. In the preface, Childers explains that he is acting only as "editor" for a story that our two sailors felt compelled to publish because their communications with the British Government had had only the most transitory influence on naval policy, and they felt the only way forward was to "make their story public". An epilogue by this same "editor" gives a lot more detail on how the invasion scheme would have worked (the target would have been the coast adjacent to Boston!), and warns that although this plot was foiled, "others may be conceived".

There's also a postscript, dated March 1903, which adds: "It so happens that while this book was in the press a number of measures have been taken by the Government to counteract some of the very weaknesses and dangers which are alluded to above." And indeed, it has been claimed that the book informed the siting of naval bases at Scapa Flow, the Firth of Forth, and Invergordon, and that none other than Winston Churchill acknowledged this...



According to Kate Macdonald, Childers didn't like hearing the book described as fiction. Not only was much of the description of the coast drawn from voyages he had actually undertaken, but also the danger portrayed in the book did not seem to him in any way fictional. Many contemporary reviewers also disagreed as to its genre, and there were instances of intrepid sailors following in the Dulcibella's wake -- and getting arrested as spies.

Whatever its category, it is widely regarded as formative, shaping the adventure writing of W.E. Johns and John Buchan (who, according to Michael Dirda, regarded the book as "the best story of adventure published in the last quarter of a century"). And of course, it influenced subsequent writers of spy stories. (Dirda also quotes a latter-day blurb for the book by John Le Carre: "Vibrant, impassioned, witty, intelligent and shamelessly prejudiced in the manner of its day, The Riddle of the Sands remains one of the great foundation stones of the contemporary novel of espionage and adventure with political teeth.")



To what extent, though, did it feed Britain's spy mania? The era was one of "invasion-scare" fiction (French historian Marc Ferro points to more than 20 works in England that "foresaw the British surprised, invaded and defeated", a reflection of "the nagging worries besetting the country"). Particularly notable in this context is the work of William Le Queux, whose invasion worries were initially directed towards France and Russia, but whose 1906 publication, entitled The Invasion of 1910, was influenced by Childers, and imagines a new enemy marshalling its armada in the Frisian Islands. Of course, any invasion must be preceded by legions of spies, and his Spies of the Kaiser, published in 1909, took spy mania to new heights (aided and abetted by the popular press, which published advice like this: "Refuse to be served by a German waiter. If your waiter says he is Swiss, ask to see his passport"). In 1909, in response to the growing (and totally unjustified) panic, Britain set up the Secret Service Bureau (the forerunner of MI5 and MI6). It established that there were hardly any German spies in the country...

The whipping up of fears of invasion and espionage certainly added to the climate of tension in Europe in the early years of the 20th century. But it was certainly not Childers' intention to contribute to this. The only "spying", after all, that is done in the novel on behalf of the Germans is undertaken by a renegade British national... Childers himself hoped that "nobody will read into this story of adventure any intention of provoking feelings of hostility to Germany". And Carruthers and Davies are not in the least anti-German. Quite the reverse. Davies is a big fan of the Kaiser, and thoroughly understands Germany's constraints: "[Germany's sea-power is] a new thing with them, but it's going strong, and that Emperor of theirs is running it for all it's worth. He's a splendid chap, and anyone can see he's right. They've got no colonies to speak of, and MUST have them, like us. They can't get them and keep them, and they can't protect their huge commerce without naval strength. The command of the sea is THE thing nowadays, isn't it?" Carruthers, speaking from his experience in Germany and in the Foreign Office, describes Germany's "marvellous awakening in the last generation, under the strength and wisdom of her rulers; her intense patriotic ardour; her seething industrial activity, and, most potent of all, the forces that are moulding modern Europe, her dream of a colonial empire, entailing her transformation from a land-power to a sea-power".

I guess it's an object lesson in the dangers of being misread and misrepresented...



While not anti-German, The Riddle of the Sands doesn't entirely avoid some of the other obnoxious attitudes of its age. But they're not frequent enough to grate too badly, and all in all I found it a really enjoyable listen. The characters are well developed and likable (Carruthers, as narrator, is amusingly self-deprecating, and Davies comes across as the plucky, salt-of-the-earth kind of chap that you'd love to have around in a crisis, but would probably advise Miss Dollmann against marrying...). The territory (with its atmospheric sandbanks, mudflats, channels, and inlets) is evocatively described, and the tension and suspense build nicely from a very early stage.



Having appreciated this author's talent, I was shocked, therefore, to find out what had happened to him. Childers served in the Boer War and in World War I, earning a Distinguished Service Cross. But his mother's family was Irish, and as time went on, he found his loyalties lay with the republican struggle for an independent Ireland.

The turn of the tide seems to have been 1910, when he published The Framework of Home Rule, a book that "marks the point where Childers, emerging from his family's Liberal tradition of English politics, had become an Irish nationalist of the moderate Home Rule variety".

Jerome Aan de Wiel writes: "In April 1914 the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) smuggled German arms into the country during a daring gun-running operation and it was followed by a gun-running operation of the Irish Volunteers the following July. The irony here was that it was Erskine Childers, by now a committed Irish nationalist, who transported the German rifles on his yacht! It could be said that his writing of The Riddle of the Sands had provided him with enough experience. Fiction was becoming fact..."

His end is recounted by Dirda like this: "Captured during the civil war with a small pistol (supposedly a gift from Michael Collins), he was imprisoned as a terrorist and then, partly as an example to others, executed in 1922. He accepted his fate calmly and seems to have even welcomed his chance to die as a martyr to a cause he firmly, even fanatically, believed in. His last words were to the firing squad: 'Take a step or two forwards, lads. It will be easier that way.'"

He was 52. Before his execution, he asked his 17-year-old son, Erskine Hamilton Childers, to promise never to use his death sentence for political advantage, and to seek out and make peace with those who had authorized it.

Bravo.