Erskine Childers (1) (1870–1922)

This book, Childers’s only novel, is said to be the model for all later thrillers from Eric Ambler to John Le Carre. Davies, an oddball friend from university, invites Carruthers to join him cruising on a yacht with perhaps a little duck hunting. The first portion of the book is dedicated to that cruise in language that reeks of upper-crust England. The reader begins to wonder exactly where the story is going when Davies explains that he is searching for someone who nearly killed him and show more whom he believes is a traitor. Thus begins a cat-and-mouse game packed to the gills with nautical minutiae and terms (many of which were incomprehensible to me). It is a tribute to Childers’s abilities that I kept reading, despite the frequency with which the detailed nautical words and sentences appeared. The story itself, published in 1903, imagines a possible German invasion of England by sea and some of the writing dealing with contemporary politics and contemplating this is fascinating. (Fascinating postscript: Childers, born an Englishman, became involved in Irish politics before and during World War One, eventually using his yacht to bring arms and ammunition to the Irish, arms later later used in the Easter Rising in 1916. He was caught and executed by a firing squad. Said Winston Churchill: "No man has done more harm or done more genuine malice or endeavoured to bring a greater curse upon the common people of Ireland than this strange being, actuated by a deadly and malignant hatred for the land of his birth." In 1973 Erskine Hamilton Childers Jr. was elected the fourth president of Ireland.) show less

"Germany's a thundering great nation....I wonder if we shall ever fight her."

Erskine Childers’s novel was first published in 1903 and was set against the Anglo-German Great Naval Race, it has been widely regarded as the first modern spy story. It opens during the first week of September, presumably a year or two before 1903, with Carruthers working for the Foreign Office. He’s been stuck all summer in London whilst his friends have gone off to the country on their holidays and is feeling show more somewhat left out. He is unsure where to go for his own holiday when he unexpectedly receives a letter from a former university acquaintance, Davies, who invites him to go sailing around the Baltic. After some dithering, he decides to go.

Carruthers has done some sailing previously and arrives expecting a pleasure cruise on a crewed yacht and so has naturally brought along proper yachting clothes. What he discovers is a cramped thirty-foot flat-bottomed boat, the Dulcibella. Davies admits that he can actually sail her alone, though finds life more pleasant with a companion.

Childers initially pokes fun at Carruthers’s early days aboard the Dulcibella but gradually as his seamanship improves so the reader is introduced to the intricacies of sailing a small vessel in tidal estuaries, amid shifting sand bars.By modern standards "The Riddle of the Sands" develops very slowly. The first third in fact seems to be mainly an account of in-shore sailing, with an odd storm to spice things up but through shared experiences the two young men's friendship grows.

One day, when they are confined to port due of fog, they are visited by a German barge captain who casually recounts how he saved Davies's life during a gale when the Dulcibella had run aground.Davies finally opens up about this incident to Carruthers and reveals that he got in to this perilous position whilst being guided by a more powerful yacht captained by an Englishman masquerading as a German. Davies believes that this was deliberate attempt on his life but why? As the two young men try to find out, so the action quickens.

As I stated at the beginning of this review this book was written against the backdrop of great a naval build up by both Britain and Germany so this book cannot be seen simply as a spy story. In fact despite its almost instant popularity this was the only novel that Childers ever wrote, instead he spent his career writing naval manuals. What Childers wanted to do was to bring the book’s warning message to a far wider audience, he believed that the British Government was either ignoring or reacting far too slowly to the threat of invasion that Germany posed. As Carruthers ominously says: “She grows, and strengthens, and waits.”

In this regard, "The Riddle of the Sands" may be viewed as an example of contemporary novels that imagined a great war in the near future. It is almost disconcerting, then, that Davies frequently expresses his admiration for the Germans as a people and even praises the kaiser. Yet despite this by the end, both he and Carruthers will risk their lives to alert the Admiralty to a realistic threat.

As I stated earlier this is a slow burner by modern standards but has many of the ingredients found in modern spy stories, a daring journey by night, having to decipher a few enigmatic clues, unmask a traitor and rescue a beautiful young woman all whilst trying to shake off enemy agents, all written at a time when hardened professionals are no match for plucky amateurs. Even today this book still has an immense influence on the genre and for that reason alone deserves to be read. show less

I want to start this review of one of my favorite novels by using a quotation from a fellow member’s review that, very succinctly and with true wit totally encapsulates the actual story”It’s a story about chaps. And boats. And rotters. And mud, lots of mud. By Christ there’s a lot of mud. Riddle of the mud would be closer to the truth…” Later he adds a ‘warning’ that despite being an guys adventure – that in truth carried significant implications and political repercussions show more – it does contain a love interest. But it is OK guys – no ‘scribblin’ wimmin’ this –it is described with a true stiff upper-lip by a jolly decent chap. Ironically, Erskine was exactly that, a jolly decent upstanding Brit, even if he was eventually executed for treason, by his own side.

This extraordinary tale of boating in the mud of estuaries and evil German plots against the ‘old country’ of a Britain in decline, set in time already gone, a time of Empire and servants, guns held by Bond Street outfitters and decent chaps fulfilling their duty in the service of their country is actually based on certain aspects of the author’s own real life. In his biography of Childers Thirst for the Sea: The Sailing Adventures of Erskine Childers (http://www.librarything.com/work/1901838/book/79570637), Hugh Popham reveals that Childers, in his Colin Archer designed yacht the Asgard had adventures of smuggling and gun-running for the Irish Republicans that could have been a chapter in the “riddle of the muds” itself! Indeed, using Childers’ own words Popham offers some pretty convincing biographical evidence that the two divergent heroes of Riddle of the Sands were one and the same ... and were, in fact, Erskine Childers himself.

This almost Conradian adventure – a pure delight for those readers who love boats and muddy swatchways or who know the Frisian Islands – was treated very seriously in Britain because of its predictions of the probable intentions of the rotters and villains - to the extent that the first Sea Lord (one; Sir Winston Churchill) suggested that several of the Naval Contingency Plans, a duplication of the cruise (in May 1910) by Secret Service members (http://www.librarything.com/work/book/83591984) leading to the arrest and 4 year prison sentences of the SIS officers (see page 28 of MI6 by Nigel West) and even new Naval Bases were created in the World Wars with the Germans in later years because of the veracity of this story.

The book is also credited as creating the genre of the fictional spy story set in factional geographical or political environs. Whilst readers were later assured that it’s adventures and warnings were all “just fiction” based on the improbable and imaginary experiences of some pretty likeable but unlikely chaps, the fact that the author was a dedicated and enormously experienced yachtsman, who met his death by execution ordered by the Provisional Irish Government, and was justly accused of spying, supporting and gun-running for the Irish Nationalist cause, adds a certain curiosity about just how much of this story was based on a similar truth.

What does ring true is the sailing, seamanship and general ‘messing about in boats’ – a delight to readers who know a bowsprit from a bumpkin – but also a great adventurous Spy-Story with torturous plot-twists and strong ambience that le Carré himself might envy. A book that can be enjoyed and re-read, on several levels, and several times. show less

Some years ago I heard that this book was purported to be one of the first spy novels, and had been instrumental in persuading the UK government and Admiralty of the danger of German invasion, years before the outbreak of WWI. I wasn't sure what to expect, but the book has a surprisingly easy to read style, apart from the density of seafaring detail and references to maps and charts. Yes, this book comes equipped with two maps and two charts, which the reader is often advised to consult, so show more won't be for everyone.

The 'conceit' is that Childers is merely editing a real life story based on a diary, charts, maps and the verbal accounts of two young men whom, to safeguard their identities, he has named Carruthers and Davies. Those of us accustomed to umpteen TV comedy sketches over the years where the upper class Englishman is usually called Carruthers might find this slightly amusing. The narrative is written as from Carruthers' POV, as the writer of the diary. He is a landlubber who ends up with more than he bargained for when he accepts an invitation from his old University friend Davies to join him on a duck hunt in the vicinity of the German Frisian islands. Carruthers' previous experience of the sea is as 'a pampered passenger' on a fine steam yacht, but instead he ends up on 'a scrubby little craft of doubtful build and distressing plainness', the Dulcibella, a ship which proves redoubtable during their subsequent adventures.

Davies is a natural seaman with an instinctive feel for handling a boat, especially in the difficult passages around the islands which are treacherous with sandbanks and where boats can easily run aground with the falling of the tide. He is happiest afloat wearing clothes as scruffy as his boat, and is fairly inept in social situations, especially where the subject of a young woman, daughter of a German businessman, Dollmann, is concerned. Carruthers gradually discovers that they are not actually there to shoot duck but because Davies needs a second hand onboard for an investigation into whether or not Dollmann is involved in espionage and German preparations to defend the coast using the navigable inlets along the coast, sheltered behind the line of Frisian islands. Having lived in Germany for a while, Carruthers speaks the language fluently whereas Davies has only a rudimentary ability so it is for this that he has chosen Carruthers to accompany him, plus Carruthers' contacts (he works in the Foreign Office in London).

Davies believes that Dollmann deliberately tried to kill him by offering to lead him through a safe passage and then stranding him in an area where the Dulcibella should have broken up in a storm - Davies escaped only by luck and the arrival of another sailing boat with a helpful owner who towed her back into deep water. Now Davies wants to find out why Dollmann was so determined to stop his explorations of the little channels, something he had been doing for enjoyment but which it seemed Dollmann viewed as the act of a spy from England. The two men proceed on a sometimes foolhardy exploration of the island channels and islands, with Carruthers gradually adapting to onboard life and becoming knowledgeable and capable enough by the end part of the story to carry out his own singlehanded investigation of the coastline.

Despite the difficulties sometimes - a glossary of nautical terms would have been handy - and the small size of the maps/charts which required use of a small magnifier with built in torch - I did enjoy the unfolding of the story, making allowances for the slightly old fashioned style and the occasional inclusion of attitudes or terms that were perfectly acceptable at the time but which are racist or sexist by today's standards. Fortunately, there are not too many of those. A slight criticism is that the final section where Carruthers takes the spying investigation up close and personal should have been imbued with much more tension and suspense. show less