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The Dreadnought Hoax
The more things change … Anyone who thinks that Sacha Baron Cohen is the first Cambridge educated prankster to fool the high and the low with his impersonations should meet Horace DeVere Cole (1881–1936), a lifetime practical joker who would have been more than a match for Cohen’s Ali G, Bruno or Borat.
HMS Dreadnought was the fastest and most powerful battleship of her day and was in many respects symbolic of Britain’s imperial power.
On February 7, 1910 the Prince of Abyssinia and his entourage were received with full ceremonial pomp on the deck of the H.M.S. Dreadnought, the British Navy’s most powerful battleship. Although the Commander-in-Chief of the Dreadnought had only received a last-minute warning of the Prince’s arrival, he had the sailors standing at attention when the Prince arrived.
The Abyssinian party acknowledged the greeting with bows as they shuffled onto the ship, dressed in their long, flowing robes, and for the next forty minutes the Commander gave them a personal, guided tour. According to contemporary accounts, the Abyssinians paused at each new marvel while murmuring the appreciative phrase “Bunga, Bunga!” in their native tongue. Finally the royal visitors departed as “God Save the King!” played in the background.
The next day the Navy was mortified to learn that the party they had escorted around the warship had not been Abyssinian dignitaries at all. Instead it had been a group of young, upper class pranksters who had blackened their faces, donned elaborate theatrical costumes, and then forged an official telegram in order to gain access to the ship. Their ringleader was a man named Horace de Vere Cole, but the entourage also included a young woman called Virginia Stephen who would later be better known as the writer Virginia Woolf. She was later referred to as A Woolf in sheikh’s clothing
By February 12 the British newspapers were full of the story of the stunt. “Bunga Bungle!” the Western Daily Mercury trumpeted. For a few days the Navy was the laughingstock of Britain. Sailors were greeted with cries of “Bunga, Bunga” wherever they went. It was suggested that the Dreadnought change its name to the Abyssinian.
Humiliated and furious, the Navy sent the warship out to sea until the episode blew over. It wanted to bring formal charges against the pranksters, but dropped the idea for fear that it would simply attract more publicity to the case.
This was neither the first nor the last of Cole’s pranks. He had previously fooled the mayor of Cambridge who had received him as the uncle of the sultan of Zanzibar.
Once he was driving in a taxi with Shane Leslie and a dummy of a nude woman; as the taxi passed a policeman at Piccadilly he opened its door, banged the dummy’s head on the road shouting ‘ungrateful hussy!’ and drove off at high speed. He would walk with a cow’s udder protruding from his flies and then cut it off with scissors before aghast bystanders.
Horace De Vere Cole was a striking man with piercing blue eyes, bristling white hair, and stiff moustaches. His advanced deafness prevented him from realizing that his carefully timed coughing was inadequate to cover his explosive breaking of wind.
Thanks to Joan Druett for pointing out Cole to me. He was quite a character.
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