On 1 July more than 10,000 people including heads of
state and members of the Royal Family will gather to
commemorate the centenary of the bloodiest day in British
military history. But could the entreaties of a cruising
yachtsman have prevented the Battle of the Somme?
STORY DICK DURHAM
THE RIDDLE
OF THE PLANS^
intended to winter the boat. But his rudimentary craft,
which drew only 4ft with the centre-plate raised, proved
a poor tool to windward and he abandoned his fi rst leg
to Dieppe and returned instead to Boulogne. As the
westerlies continued he considered the coastline
downwind: towards the Baltic, the Netherlands, and the
Dutch and German Frisian Islands.
Thanks to our prevailing south-westerly winds the
material for the world’s fi rst novel of espionage, The
Riddle of the Sands, was about to be gathered.
Germany’s coastline is a mere 120 miles long and
hidden behind a ‘necklace’ of islets not much more than
glorifi ed sand dunes.
During Childers’ cruise he found himself exploring
the myriad channels behind these islands with his
brother Henry and cursing the inadequate Admiralty
charts. He made innumerable soundings and took
positions of beacons, church spires and other daymarks
and marked them on his own charts.
We only know all this thanks to another yachtsman,T
he fog lifted and from the deck of the gaff
cutter Vixen, a 28ft converted ship’s lifeboat,
her skipper surveyed the horizon.
‘The eye must be content with a fi ne
pencil-line of grey, dotted with a windmill or two, an
occasional spire, and a rare clump of trees. Above all one
must love sand in all its manifestations; the various and
subtle hues from umber to pale straw of dry or drying
fl ats. Monotony of scene must be a joy in itself and
inspiration must be found in a kind of solitude more
dreary than the dreariest moorlands and the most naked
mountains.’
Erskine Childers was looking at Germany, or rather
its sand-infested edge bordered by the North Sea. The
edge which faced the greatest sea power the world had
ever seen: Great Britain.
Ironically this House of Commons clerk, in the
summer of 1897, had planned to sail westwards from
Boulogne towards Brittany, around Ushant and via the
inland waterways of France to the Med where he