Pranksters Pretended to be Royals During “The Dreadnought Hoax”
In 1910, an Irish prankster by the name of Horace de Vere Cole organized a hoax with a group of his friends. They showed up to the UK’s Royal Navy wearing foreign costumes and blackface, claiming to be “Abyssinian royals” from Ethiopia. This convinced the navy officers to allow them a personal tour of the HMS Dreadnought.
The famous author Virginia Woolf was friends with Cole, and later wrote that the naval officers of “the Hawke and the Dreadnought had a feud. … And Cole’s friend who was on the Hawke had come to Cole, and said to him, “You’re a great hand at hoaxing people; couldn’t you do something to pull the leg of the Dreadnought? They want taking down a bit. Couldn’t you manage to play off one of your jokes against them?” It totally worked, and it was forever remembered as “The Dreadnought Hoax“.
