The Dreadnought Hoax, report in The Sketch

Page from The Sketch magazine reporting on the Dreadnought hoax. The incident was a joke played by a group led by Horace de Vere Cole, including the writer Virginia Stephen (Woolf, seen far left in the bottom picture) who dressed up as the Emperor of Abyssinia and his party, and turned up out of the blue to inspect the battleship Dreadnought'. The group were received with the usual courtesies accorded to distinguished visitors, and were shown over the vessel. The Dreadnought hoax was not the first time this group had played the joke. The top photograph shows the Abyssinian princes on an occasion when they visited the Mayor of Cambridge as the Sultan of Zanzibar and his suite

Abyssinia Abyssinian Bloomsbury Dreadnought Hoax Horace Joke Practical Ridley Vere Woolf Zanzibar

Features In These Collections

> Contributors > ILN