RIDDLE OF THE PLANS
Maldwin Drummond, whose curiosity about Childers’
book led him to make his own sailing cruise of the
Frisian Islands, and to research Childers’ logbooks,
diaries and letters as well as to interview Childers’
youngest son Robert.
The result was The Riddle, published in 1985, a
second, updated edition of which is to be published this
year (2016) with illustrations by Martyn Mackrill,
resident artist of the Royal Yacht Squadron.
Maldwin’s quest was to explore what was fi ction and
what was faction in The Riddle of the Sands. He told
Classic Boat: ‘Childers got quite irritated when people
referred to the book as a novel. He tried to make it a true
story.’
While Childers’ original cruise might simply have
been serendipitous it later took on an air of menacing
coincidence. His book, published in 1903, posited the
fantasy of German troops being smuggled to The Wash
or Essex via a fl eet of coal barges towed over from the
many channels of the Frisian Islands.
An arms race between Britain and Germany had been
ongoing since 1900 as the Kaiser built a fl eet of
battleships to match Britain’s Dreadnoughts, and
warnings of an invasion by Germany were aired in
contemporary newspapers several years before Childers
actually sat down to write his thriller.
Before the military build-up between the two nations,
tensions already existed between their representatives.
Maldwin, a past Commodore of the Royal Yacht
Squadron, told CB exclusively how Kaiser Wilhelm II
challenged his nephew, Edward VII, then Prince of
Wales, to a race between their respective yachting crews
during one Cowes Week.
Which crew could get from the deck of their racing
yacht to the Squadron’s steps fi rst?
As it turned out the Kaiser’s crew could.
‘This didn’t please the Prince of Wales and an
altercation took place which ended in fi sticuffs when the
Prince of Wales struck the Kaiser,’ said Maldwin.
Of course it would be fanciful to say that the Kaiser
would get his own back with the
Schlieffen Plan, but personality clashes
played a not insignifcant role in the
road to August 1914.So Childers’ innocent cruise, his exploration of
unknown channels, and the making of charts, was, a
decade after he wrote it, to take on a deadly serious
mien.
What is much more fascinating than Childers’
fi ctional plot of German invasion via the Frisian Islands
is Winston Churchill’s real-life plan of a British
invasion...via the Frisian Islands.
Maldwin told CB, that Churchill, then First Lord of
the Admiralty, ordered Childers to make a report on the
German Frisian Islands so that both he (Churchill) and
his First Sea Lord, Jacky Fisher, could assess the viability
of seizing the German Frisian island of Borkum.
Borkum was Germany’s U-Boat base – it was from
here that a U-Boat departed to sink the Lusitania in
1915- and it was thought that with the use of shoal-
draught monitor warships the island could be shelled to
form a bridgehead.
Late in 1914 Churchill was desperate to break the
stalemate of the war on the Western Front because after
fi ve months of hostilities the opposing armies faced each
other in trenches from the Swiss border to the EnglishTop: Childers’ notes from on board HMS Engadine: ‘I asked his opinion
of a plan by which a submarine should carry one seaplane to a point
within reach of Borkum with a view to a raid mainly for reconnaissance
on that island and Ems and Emden. He thinks it is quite feasible.’
Below: Part of the Committee of Imperial Defence replyAbove: The HMS Engadine converted to a sea plane carrier
and her Christmas card of 1914IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUM
IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUMIMPERIAL WAR MUSEUM