For Admiral Sir William May, the events of 7 February 1910 proved highly inconvenient, even awkward. As he was in charge of the home fleet of the greatest naval power on earth, it was his duty not only to protect Britain, but also to help the Foreign Office with its diplomatic work. And it was this latter role that was annoying him. A telegram had arrived from the Foreign Office that morning, informing him of the visit of ‘Prince Makalen of Abyssinia and his suite’, who wished to inspect his pride and joy – the vast, state-of-the-art battleship HMS Dreadnought, then lying off Weymouth in Dorset.

The whole day had been something of a scramble and the Foreign Office had, typically, not given sufficient warning to those involved. At Paddington railway station in London, Herbert Cholmondley of the FO had demanded a private train for the Abyssinians to travel to Weymouth.   However, no one had troubled to inform the railway company. Nevertheless, the stationmaster managed to attach one private carriage to the regular Weymouth service, found some red carpet and arranged a guard of honour made up of his ticket inspectors. That would have to do.

The Abyssinian party headed for Weymouth, the stationmaster waving his top hat as the dignitaries pulled out of his station. At their destination there was more confusion. The officers of Dreadnought had turned out in their full dress uniforms to hear the party piped aboard but they hadn’t managed to find an Abyssinian flag and none of the marine band knew the Abyssinian national anthem. Instead they hoisted the flag of Zanzibar, whose anthem the band played in the hope that this would be similar enough to pass unnoticed.

It seemed to work. On board Dreadnought, the party were apparently very pleased with what they saw, regularly stopping at every new technical marvel, raising their hands in the air and shouting, ‘Bunga bunga’. At sunset they asked for prayer mats, which again caused consternation as such things were not normally carried on board British battleships. It was finally agreed that evening prayers could wait until the visit was over, provided the navy agreed to abandon its usual bugle call at this time, which might offend the dignitaries. Finally the party was invited to take tea, at which point their interpreter suddenly announced that the visit was over and they would have to return to their train.

The Abyssinian visit to HMS Dreadnought ended without a diplomatic incident and the exotic party waved from the windows of their train at the crowds who had gathered to see them off. By now there was some suspicion on Dreadnought that all was not quite as it should be. Why had the party so suddenly left and, as one staff officer pointed out, why did their interpreter have a German accent? Could he be a spy? Should they have shown these people around without first confirming their identity with the Foreign Office?

Of course they certainly should have rung the Foreign office as they found out the next morning when the story broke in the newspapers. The ‘Abyssinians’, whom they had so deferentially shown around the world’s most powerful warship, were in fact a group of London hoaxers, including the son of a judge, an artist and the writer Virginia Stephen (later Virginia Woolf). With the aid of Sarah Bernhardt’s make-up artist, they had fooled the whole British establishment into believing they were the Abyssinian royal family. Their sudden departure from the ship the previous evening had been solely due to the fact that they had been warned not to eat or drink when wearing their make-up as it would come off.

Needless to say, the papers took an absolute delight in ridiculing the Royal Navy, as did the crowds at Weymouth. So embarrassed was the navy that HMS Dreadnought was ordered to sea to ‘ride out the storm’.

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