Dreadnought hoax

The Dreadnought hoax was a practical joke pulled by Horace de Vere Cole in 1910. Cole tricked the Royal Navy into showing their flagship, the battleship HMS Dreadnought, to a fake delegation of Abyssinian royals. The hoax drew attention in Britain to the emergence of the Bloomsbury Group, among whom some of Cole's collaborators numbered. The hoax was a repeat of a similar impersonation which Cole and Adrian Stephen had organised while they were students at Cambridge in 1905.

Cole and Adrian Stephen sought diversion while they were students at Cambridge. After a series of minor hoaxes, they decided to do something more elaborate. Stephen wanted to take command of a platoon of German soldiers and lead them across the French frontier to cause an incident. Cole's idea was more feasible—to pose as the Sultan of Zanzibar and make a state visit to Cambridge.

The Sultan was visiting England at the time and details had been published in the newspapers. A telegram was sent to the Mayor, ostensibly from a government official. Cole, Stephen and three other friends then dressed up in robes and turbans and arrived at the railway station where they were met by the Town Clerk who took them to an official reception by the Mayor at the Guildhall. After the reception, charity bazaar and tour of the sights, they were taken back to the station, where they made their escape. The story was then given to the Daily Mail by Cole and became famous. The Mayor wanted the student but was persuaded by the Vice-Chancellor that this would damage his reputation further.

The Dreadnought hoax was a similar impersonation which was suggested to Cole by a friend who was an officer on HMS Hawke to hoax their rivals on HMS Dreadnought, including Commander Willie Fisher—the Stephens' cousin—who was on the staff of the Admiral. As Virginia Woolf later recounted,

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