It was blowing a strong NW gale. Seagulls flying hard against it were stationary over the ground. Low, scudding clouds joined themselves to the sea in hissing, blinding squalls of rain. The ferry taking me from Norderney island, off the coast of Friesland, wallowed deep into the troughs of waves formed in these shallowing waters by a long fetch from the North Sea. It was for this region, a typical equinoctial storm

I had come here in early October for a few days, by way of a detour from business in Germany, to visit the principal scene, and walk over the famous sands of Erskine Childers’s well-known novel. It happened also to be precisely the same time of year.

It has been for some long time my pleasure to take The Riddle of the Sands off my shelf at bed-time during the darkest winter days. Of course, I know the tale well, yet at each reading I enjoy again the excellent use of the English language, clear, robust and taut. The descriptions of the surroundings during the voyage are more than just evocative: some passages, laid out appropriately, read as poetry. To be admired too, is the skilful control of mood and pace as the story unfolds, though this can make the book itself a riddle to the new reader. In successive readings, yet another slant on the several, inter-woven layers of the tale may, emerge because of the reality of these layers. The story is based on two real-life cruises through Holland and past Friesland to the Baltic. The first was reported in The Falcon on the Baltic by E F Knight, and the second — inspired by Knight — was by Childers himself in his converted life-boat, the Vixen that becomes the Dulcibella of the tale. These two are combined and set against the real politico-military situation at the end of the 19th century when Germany was going all-out to build a navy to help win an overseas empire.

The solution to the riddle of the book, discovered by a British cruising pair, was a German plan to invade England by towing a fleet of barges from canals behind tiny havens on the Frisian shore. such as Bensersiel, available only a couple of hours each side of high water. Memories of the RAF raids on the barges being assembled along the Channel coast for the invasion of England in 1940, made the book immediately realistic to me. Then again, Childers was a keen dinghy cruiser who explored the muddy inlets of the Thames estuary before going into larger craft, so he could get exactly the right feel into the narrative, and any DCA member can respond to it at once from similar experience. The novel had a powerful political effect in this country when first published and prompted the formation of the ‘Wavy Navy’, the RN Reserve. Yet, though it tells of a patriotic adventure by Britons, it was not chauvinistic: the foreigners are mostly shown as amiable and hospitable, the most admirable character is the German naval Commander, and the apparent cad was really a British ex-Lieutenant RN, seeming to assist the invasion plan in the guise of a Swedish engineer.

Norderney

Arriving in Norderney, I had no trouble in finding a good hotel because the summer visitors had departed, leaving many boarding houses closed and shuttered to await the spring. Alas, the NW gale had driven the North Sea into this SE corner to the extent that low water was at the level of normal high water and the sands were not to be seen. When the gale showed no sign of abating, I returned to the mainland and travelled by the local coast train to Esens. From there it was a 4-mile walk to Bensersiel, another focus of the riddle. I found Bensersiel had become quite a smart haven for yachts, and I watched one being craned out for laying up. Walking along the sea wall, or dyke, was quite bracing! Still no sands, so back south to stay in Emden as a base. Here I looked round the harbour and made a bus trip to Greetsiel, another of the havens of the ‘riddle’ where I watched the shrimping dredgers returning from sea. Two weeks later, I did see the sands but from a flight between Amsterdam and Stockholm. But then it was just like looking down on a vast sandy waste, flattened out from this height with only the main channels being distinct.

Books

The original editions of The Riddle of the Sands had fold-out maps, but these are now very scarce. There is now a paperback in the Wordsworth Series at £1.00. For those who would read more of Childers the man and his sailing activities, I can recommend A Thirst for the Sea edited by Hugh and Robin Popham, well illustrated with photos including one of the Vixen afloat under sail, and The Riddle by Maldwin Drummond which has charts and photos including one of the boat as Dulcibella in her old age, ashore at Lymington. There are several others. Well worth reading, too, is Knight’s cruise in the Falcon that was also a lifeboat of doubled teak hull converted to a yacht, though it had just a shallow false keel and no centreboard.