Dreadnought hoax
[2][3] On his return to Britain, he became an undergraduate at Trinity College, Cambridge; he studied little and spent his time entertaining and undertaking hoaxes and pranks.
[7] In early 1905, while in their second year at Trinity College, Cambridge, Cole and Adrian Stephen decided to use a visit to England of Sayyid Ali bin Hamud Al-Busaid, the eighth Sultan of Zanzibar, as the basis for a hoax.
As they did not want to return to London—returning from which would have meant them breaking the 10:00 pm college curfew—on arrival at the station, they ran out of a side exit and took two hansom cabs to a friend's house, where they changed back into their normal attire.
[15][16] The following day Cole gave an interview to the Daily Mail about the hoax; the story appeared in the paper on 4 March 1905 and was repeated in local newspapers.
[26] According to the historian Jan Rüger, from the time the ship was launched, it took on cultural significance as a symbol and it entered into public consciousness through songs and advertising.
When the ship visited London in 1909—part of three fleet reviews held—a million people were estimated to have watched its arrival, and by 1910 it "had become a cultural icon with undeniable symbolic status".
"[33]This involved Cole and five friends—writer Virginia Stephen (later Virginia Woolf), her brother Adrian Stephen, Guy Ridley, Anthony Buxton and the artist Duncan Grant—who had themselves disguised by the theatrical costumier Willy Clarkson[34] with skin darkeners and turbans to resemble members of the Abyssinian royal family.
According to the Daily Mirror, they were also wearing £500 of jewellery;[35][36] Martin Downer, in his biography of Cole, doubts the amount, which is not repeated by any of the participants.
[37] A friend of Stephen's sent a telegram to the "C-in-C, Home Fleet" (Commander-in-chief of the vessels defending Britain) stating that "Prince Makalen of Abbysinia [sic] and suite arrive 4.20 today Weymouth.
To show their appreciation, they communicated in a gibberish of words drawn from Latin and Greek; they asked for prayer mats and attempted to bestow fake military honours on some of the officers.
[41] When the prank was uncovered in London, the ringleader Horace de Vere Cole contacted the press and sent a photo of the "princes" to the Daily Mirror.
[44] A song was heard in music halls that year, sung to the tune of "The Girl I Left Behind": When I went on board a Dreadnought ship I looked like a costermonger; They said I was an Abyssinian prince 'Cos I shouted 'Bunga Bunga!
'[45] Thirty years later, in 1940, Virginia Woolf gave talks about the Dreadnought hoax to the Rodmell Women's Institute and also to the Memoir Club, the latter attended by E. M.
