The Riddle of the Sands
By Erskine Childers
Carruthers, a minor official in the Foreign Office, is contacted by an acquaintance, Davies, asking him to join in a yachting holiday in the Baltic Sea. Carruthers agrees, as his other plans for a holiday have fallen through, and because of a heartbreak due to a woman he courted becoming engaged to another man. He arrives to find that Davies has a small sailing boat (the vessel is named Dulcibella, a reference to Childers’s sister of that name), which is not the comfortably crewed yacht he expected.
However, Carruthers agrees to go on the trip and joins Davies in Flensburg on the Baltic, whence they head for the Frisian Islands off the coast of Germany. Carruthers has to learn quickly how to sail the small boat. Davies gradually reveals that he suspects the Germans are doing something sinister in the German Frisian islands. This is based on his belief that he was nearly wrecked by a German yacht luring him into a shoal in rough weather during a previous trip. The yacht was owned and captained by a mysterious German entrepreneur, Dollmann, whom Davies suspects of being an expatriate Englishman posing as a German.
The situation was further complicated by Davies having fallen deeply in love with Dollmann’s daughter, Clara – who, Davies is sure, is not involved in whatever nefarious scheme her father is engaged in. In any case, Davies is suspicious about what would motivate Dollmann to try to kill him and believes it is some scheme involving the German Imperial government. Having failed to interest anyone in the British government in the incident, Davies feels it is his patriotic duty to investigate further on his own – hence the invitation to Carruthers. Carruthers and Davies spend some time exploring the shallow tidal waters of the Frisian Islands, moving closer to the mysterious site where a rumoured secret treasure recovery project is in progress on the island of Memmert.
The two men discover that Dollmann is involved in the recovery project. Carruthers and Davies try to approach Memmert. They are warned away by a German Navy patrol boat, the Blitz, and its commander, von Brüning – who is friendly and courteous but still makes a veiled warning. This makes them all the more sure that there is something more than a treasure dig on the island. Meanwhile, they discover that Dollmann is an Englishman and an officer in the Royal Navy – having had to leave Britain in a hurry and take up a new life as a German.
Genre: Fiction And Literature | Adventure | Biography | Espionage | History | Mystery/Detective | Nautical | Romance Books | Science Fiction | Young Readers
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Erskine Childers
Robert Erskine Childers DSC (25 June 1870 – 24 November 1922), usually known as Erskine Childers, was an English-born Irish nationalist who established himself as a writer with accounts of the Second Boer War, a novel The Riddle of the Sands about German preparations for a sea-borne invasion of England, and proposals for achieving Irish independence.
Biography
He took part in the Irish Civil War and was executed by the authorities of the Irish Free State. As a firm believer in the British Empire, Childers volunteered in the army expeditionary force in the Second Boer War in South Africa. Still, his experiences there began a gradual disillusionment with British imperialism. He was adopted as a candidate in British parliamentary elections, standing for the Liberal Party at a time when the party supported a treaty to establish Irish home rule. Still, he later became an advocate of Irish republicanism and the severance of all ties with Britain. On behalf of the Irish Volunteers, he smuggled guns into Ireland, which were later used against British soldiers in the Easter Rebellion. He had a significant role in the negotiations between Ireland and Britain, culminating in the Anglo-Irish Treaty. Still, he was elected an anti-Treaty member of the first Irish parliament. He sought an active role in the Irish Civil War (over the acceptance of the terms of the Treaty) that followed. He was executed by the authorities of the Irish Free State during the civil war.
As an author, his most significant work was the novel The Riddle of the Sands, published eleven years before the start of the First World War. Its depiction of a secret German invasion fleet directed against England influenced Winston Churchill, the First Lord of the Admiralty, to strengthen the Home Fleet of the Royal Navy. On the First World War outbreak, Churchill was instrumental in calling Childers for service in the Royal Navy, for which he was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross. Childers was the son of British Orientalist scholar Robert Caesar Childers, the father of the fourth president of Ireland, Erskine Hamilton Childers, the cousin of British politician Hugh Childers and Irish nationalist Robert Barton, and the grandfather of the writer and diplomat Erskine Barton Childers and the former MEP Nessa Childers.
Erskine Childers
