Since tomorrow is April Fools Day, I figured I'd start a bit early so you don't think this is a prank. It's not. Tomorrow, I might find something fun to prank you with though.
To start with, this happened in 1910, in February, and it was put forth by a group of six, including the famed prankster William Horace de Vere Cole.
The prank itself wouldn't work nowadays and was one of those things that would have half those hearing about it freaking out and trying to make sure it would never happen again, and the other half laughing and probably having a lower opinion of those pranked. Please remember that things were a lot different then, a lot of the things you take for granted weren't there for them to use, and it's better to be careful than risk things getting really bad.
With a few of his fellow Cambridge students, William Horace de Vere Cole, hereby known as Cole, did a lot of pranks. He was kinda known for them, but that reputation hadn't spread far. When he was trying to come up with a new prank idea, one of his friends had a suggestion that grew into this.
Knowing that the Sultan of Zanzibar was in the country, they decided to impersonate him. Since his picture had been in the paper, they knew they couldn't impersonate him personally, so they instead pretended to be his uncle, with costumes and dark-face makeup, and they left Cambridge town on a train, then got off and sent a telegram to the Mayor to let him know, and got on a train back. The Mayor greeted them and accompanied them around town, treating them like he would any actual diplomat.
They nearly got expelled from the University for this, but they managed to talk their way out of it and the prank became public knowledge.
That's why Cole had to wait 5 years for the prank that this whole post is about. The group was larger for this time, so they didn't just pretend to be the uncle and his attendant. This time, Cole pretended to be from the Foreign Office, his friend was a translator, and the rest of the group were to be the Emperor of Abyssinia, now Ethiopia, and his retinue/princes. One of those in the group actually went on to become Virginia Woolf, so don't think they were all silly boys being ridiculous. They had a silly girl along too.
The actual prank was done by sending a telegram ahead, then getting into costume and meeting an Admiral, then going for a tour of his ship as African Royalty. As they would for any royal, the Admiral and all the Navy personnel did their best to show respect and made a point of how honored they are for being visited, bringing out the red carpet every step of the way.
At the end of the day, their beards becoming unglued by sweat and their makeup starting to run, the group escaped back onto to the train.
When they were planning it, it wasn't intended to be something they publicized, as the previous one had been, but none were actually that surprised when the picture above did end up in the newspaper, or when the Navy found the pranksters and got grumpy at them, but there wasn't really much punishment given, for all the embarrassment they felt.
I'm really not doing it justice. I'll probably have to rewrite this a few times to get it right, since I don't want to go into all the details that are available, but this really was a big deal then, both for what the Navy showed to the Royalty, and how ridiculously slender the scam was from Cole's side-- none of them could speak 'Abyssinian', so they just said nonsense and their translator had to figure out both what they were saying and how to respond in a way that sounded acceptable to the Navy, the trio of retinue/princes weren't clearly one or the other, and Cole apparently actually knew one of the Navy men, though barely. They were relying on no one asking questions and no one knowing better, neither of which are good things to rely on.
I don't want to spend pages waxing lyrical about their prank though, so I'll direct you to the links below, which have more details and quotes of how this prank was pulled off, and how guilty the pranksters felt afterwards, considering how earnest the Navymen were. I think this was a great prank, but I also feel a bit bad continuing the story, so I can understand it. I'm going to sign off here before I decide to delete the entire post to preserve the reputation of the British Navy, and the men of the time.
Go read the links, they've got the story better.
Sources/Better versions of the story:
National Archive-- Dreadnought Hoax
The Guardian-- The Dreadnought Hoax
National Portrait Gallery- The Dreadnought Hoax
Historical UK-- The Dreadnought Hoax
US Naval Institute-- The Dreadnought Hoax
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