Talk:Dreadnought hoax

Cambridge hoax
I think there was a very similar hoax at Cambridge a few years earlier, which worked equally well. Perhaps this should be mentioned or have its own page —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.138.141.206 (talk) 08:25, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

http://www.encyclopedia4u.com/d/dreadnought-hoax.html says the hoax took place on February 10. So does http://www.uah.edu/woolf/dread.html. http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoaxorum/hoaxorum1869.html says February 7.


 * The first of those links is simply a Wiki mirror. Information in the second seems to be from a biography of Virginia Woolf, so would seem more credible than the third. Bastie 07:05, 12 October 2005 (UTC)


 * ✅ I have added a section about the Cambridge hoax. Andrew Davidson (talk) 12:46, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

Purpose of the hoax should be more clear
The purpose of the hoax should be made more clear. WinterSpw (talk) 04:15, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

✅ The hoax was a prank by the officers on one ship upon the other, as explained below. Andrew Davidson (talk) 12:44, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

Was Cole a Navy official?
The article says the Navy sent officers to cane Cole - was he in the Navy or was this just an old Eton practice? It also says he suggested they be caned - so was he not? s-slaytor. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.137.80.110 (talk) 14:18, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
 * And was roughing Cole up an "official" navy response, or did some individual officers just decide to teach him a lesson? I can't really see Jacky Fisher resorting to thuggery. Cranston Lamont (talk) 15:17, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

✅ there was some caning but this seems to have been mostly symbolic. Andrew Davidson (talk) 12:44, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

Cost of hoax
£4000 sounds like an awful lot of money for a hoax of this kind. I've removed the figure until someone actually confirms it. Peter Isotalo 08:05, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

The cost was significant as the regalia included expensive jewellery. Cole was rich but ended his life destitute after speculating in Canadian land. Andrew Davidson (talk) 12:44, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

That big "proviso" note at the top
I notice that a section disproving some of the recieved information about this hoax has been added rather unceremoniously to the top of this article by User talk:Stanpat, who seems to have a history of slightly unconstructive editing, although it sounds feasible. Is there any way that this can be either integrated or cited in a more coherent way? Rob (talk) 11:49, 4 September 2009 (UTC)


 * I shall make something of this helpful note. Andrew Davidson (talk) 12:44, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

Note removed from the article
NOTE: The recovery of Virginia Woolf's complete 1940 talk on the Dreadnought Hoax has rendered obsolete previous accounts of the Hoax such as that given below. Her talk, only a few pages of which were previously known, was discovered recently by Georgia Johnston in the Women's Library of London Metropolitan University. A common-reader version of the talk together with a reinterpretation of the Hoax was published in the expanded edition of Virginia Woolf's The Platform of Time: Memoirs of Family and Friends, edited by S. P. Rosenbaum  (London, Hesperus Press 2008). A variorum transcription of Woolf's talk by Johnston appears in the 2009 volume of Woolf Studies Annual. Among the more significant changes in the story of the Hoax as revealed in Woolf's talk are that it was not really a Bloomsbury Group hoax at all - a number of the Group's members strongly disapproved of it - but one inspired by the officers of another Royal ship, H.M.S. Hawk.

Proposal of Changes to "Dreadnoughts and the Royal Navy"
1) The previous version ended with these passages:

"In February 1910 the captain of Dreadnought was Herbert Richmond; Admiral Sir William May was the Commander-in-Chief, Home Fleet; as such, Dreadnought was his flagship. Also present on Dreadnought was Commander Willie Fisher—the Stephens' cousin—who was on the staff of the Admiral.

''The C.F.Martin guitar company designed and built its biggest and finest acoustic steel string guitar for the Ditson company and later for its own line and quickly called it “dreadnought“. This design became the basis For practically every company’s most successful line of acoustic guitars and the term “dreadnought” has been used for this style of guitar ever since, regardless of brand or manufacturer."''

The second of these passages clearly was added as an afterthought by someone. I switched the two passages around, as the "guitar" passage contextually belongs to the cultural impact passages that precede all of this. While the passage about the staff should close the section, as it provides a segue to the next section.

2) I am not sure the "guitar" passage fits the scope of the other cultural impact passages, so I would (on balance) recommend that the "guitar" passage is removed entirely.

3) Which leads me to the general thought that the whole section ("Dreadnoughts and the Royal Navy") should be rewritten and shortened significantly. The useful and interesting information in this section should be included in either the Dreadnought class wikipedia entry or the HMS Dreadnought wikipedia entry, if such information does not exist there already. In one or both of these entries, this cultural impact information should be bundled and given its own section. This section we could then link to from within the newly re-written and shortened "Dreadnoughts and the Royal Navy" section in this present entry about the hoax.

--Otto von B. (talk) 15:27, 17 November 2019 (UTC)

Minilik II never visited Britain
H.I.M. Minilik II never visited any part of the UK to the best of my knowledge. In fact I believe he never left Ethiopia. Ras Mekonnen visited in 1902, he had permanenet legates in London. He was critically ill by 1909, unable to reign at the time of the Hoax. marcoetio. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.148.62.241 (talk) 23:28, 5 February 2011 (UTC)
 * This is true -- want a source? how about any biography of Emperor Menelik? -- although based on his well-documented interest in technology I expect the Emperor would have been overjoyed to have been allowed to examine a battleship. The first ruler of Ethiopia to make a foreign visit was Lij Iyasu, who visited French Somalia around the time of WWI. The sole source for this story is Virginia Woolf, who is not an expert on Ethiopia. I'm removing that paragraph. -- llywrch (talk) 00:40, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

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