Which 1903 book by Erskine Childers that is still enjoyed for its accurate portrayal of inland sailing was credited by Winston Churchill as a major reason for the establishment of naval bases in the UK?
"(TD) from 1938 to 1973. His father Robert Erskine Childers, a leading Irish republican and author of the espionage thriller ""The Riddle of the Sands"", was executed during the Irish Civil War. Childers was born in the Embankment Gardens, London, to a Protestant family, originally from Glendalough, Ireland. Although also born in England, his father, Robert Erskine Childers, had had an Irish mother and had been raised by an uncle in County Wicklow, and after the First World War took his family to live there. His mother, Mary Alden Childers was a Bostonian whose ancestors arrived on the ""Mayflower"". Robert"
"announced in Parliament (5 March 1903) and some time after secret negotiations for the purchase had begun. Although Winston Churchill later credited the book as a major reason why the Admiralty had decided to establish the new naval bases, this seems unlikely. When war was declared he ordered the Director of Naval Intelligence to find Childers, whom he had met when the author was campaigning to represent a naval seat in Parliament, and employ him. At the time Childers was writing ""Riddle"" he was also contributing to a factual book published by ""The Times"" in which he warned of outdated"
"in time for publication in May 1903. Based on his own sailing trips with his brother Henry along the German coast, it predicted war with Germany and called for British preparedness. There has been much speculation about which of Childers's friends was the model for ""Carruthers"" in the novel and it seems that he is based not on Henry Childers but on yachting enthusiast Walter Runciman; ""Davies"", of course, is Childers himself. Because of ""The Riddle"", Childers was invited to join the Savile Club, then a literary centre in London. Widely popular, the book has never gone out of print"
"of the book is taken from a quote by Winston Churchill in 1912, when he was First Lord of the Admiralty, long before becoming Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. He was arguing for the conversion of British warships from coal to fuel oil, but noted the geopolitical ramifications of tying Britain's fortunes to oil. As Yergin quotes Churchill: To build any large additional number of oil-burning ships meant basing our naval supremacy upon oil. But oil was not found in appreciable quantities in our islands. If we required it we must carry it by sea in peace or war"
"great. Over the next seven years they lived comfortably in their rented flat in Chelsea, supported by Childers's salary—he had received promotion to the position of parliamentary Clerk of Petitions in 1903—his continuing writings and, not least, generous benefactions from Dr Osgood. Molly, despite a severe weakness in the legs following a childhood skating injury, took enthusiastically to sailing, first in the ""Seagull"" and later on many voyages in her father's gift, the ""Asgard"". Childers' letters to his wife show the couple's contentment during this time. Three sons were born: Erskine in December 1905, Henry, who died before his first"
"British army tactics in the event of ""conflicts of the future"". He developed this theme in two further works he published in 1911: ""War and the Arme Blanche"" and ""German Influence on British Cavalry"". The novel contains many realistic details based on Childers's own sailing trips along the East Frisia coast and large parts of his logbook entries from an 1897 Baltic cruise ""appear almost unedited in the book."" The yacht ""Dulcibella"" in the novel is based upon ""Vixen"", the boat Childers used for his exploration. In August 1910, inspired by the work, two British amateur yachtsmen, Captain Bernard Trench"
"and in 2003, several centenary editions were published. The Observer included the book on its list of ""The 100 Greatest Novels of All Time"". The Telegraph listed it as the third best spy novel of all time. It has been called the first spy novel (a claim challenged by advocates of Rudyard Kipling's ""Kim"", published two years earlier), and enjoyed immense popularity in the years before World War I. It was an extremely influential book: Winston Churchill later credited it as a major reason that the Admiralty decided to establish naval bases at Invergordon, Rosyth on the Firth of Forth"
"ships bringing the foodstuffs Britain was unable to produce domestically. As would be confirmed by the events, the story forecast the need for the attackers to also target American ships bringing supplies to Britain - even at the price of violating International Law - forcing the British to introduce rationing among their population. At the time numerous popular writings portrayed England facing Germany in an upcoming war. The best remembered include Erskine Childers' ""The Riddle of the Sands: A Record of Secret Service"" (1903) and ""Saki""'s ""When William Came: A Story of London Under the Hohenzollerns"" (1913). Doyle's story is"
"and counter-attacks, leading to the destruction of all major cities and centers, the collapse of world economy, disintegration of all the fighting nations and the sinking of the world into new Middle Ages. ""Dracula"" (1897) also tapped into English fears of foreign forces arriving unopposed on its shores, although between 1870 and 1903 the majority of these works assumed that the enemy would be France, rather than Germany. This changed with the publication of Erskine Childers's 1903 novel ""The Riddle of the Sands"". Often called the first modern spy novel, two men on a sailing holiday thwart a German invasion"
"on the history of navigation was attributed to him, which was later questioned; but it was included in Locke's works in 1812. The brothers also published the first edition of Thomas Rymer's ""Fœdera"" (16 vols. 1701–15); the seventeenth volume (1717) was issued by William Churchill, and the last three (1726–1735) by Jacob Tonson. Attribution Awnsham Churchill Awnsham Churchill (1658–1728) was an English bookseller and Whig radical, a Member of Parliament in the reign of Queen Anne. The son of William Churchill of Dorchester, Dorset, and brother of the MPs Joshua Churchill and William Churchill, he was apprenticed to George Sawbridge."
"of all time, after Kipling's ""Kim"". It was one of the early invasion novels, ""... a story with a purpose"" in the author's own words, written from ""a patriot's natural sense of duty"", which predicted war with Germany and called for British preparedness. The whole genre of ""invasion novels"" raised the public's awareness of the ""potential threat"" of Imperial Germany. Although the belief has grown that the book was responsible for the development of the naval base at Rosyth, the novel was published in May 1903, two months after the purchase of the land for the Rosyth naval base was"
"area and, if possible, bomb the Zeppelin sheds at Cuxhaven. Lieutenant Erskine Childers RNVR, the yachtsman and author of ""Riddle of the Sands"", who had sailed the area before the war, provided the navigational briefing and accompanied Flight Commander Cecil Francis Kilner as navigator and observer. On Christmas Day, 1914, the first combined sea and air strike was executed by the Royal Navy, aimed at locating and if possible bombing the dirigible sheds housing German Zeppelins, in a pre-emptive strike to prevent the airships from attacking the United Kingdom. The air temperature was just above 0 °C and of the"
"1895 he became a junior committee clerk in the House of Commons, with responsibility for preparing formal and legally sound bills from the proposals of the government of the day. With many sporting ventures now closed to him because of his sciatic injury, Childers was encouraged by Walter Runciman, a friend from schooldays, to take up sailing. After picking up the fundamentals of seamanship as a deckhand on Runciman's yacht, in 1893 he bought his own ""scrubby little yacht"" ""Shulah"", which he learned to sail alone on the Thames Estuary. He sold the ""Shulah"" in 1895 to a Plymouth man"
"the growing threat of conflict in Europe and the revolutionary and anarchist domestic threat. The ""spy novel"" was defined by ""The Riddle of the Sands"" (1903) by author Erskine Childers, which played on public fears of a German plan to invade Britain (an amateur spy uncovers the nefarious plot). In the wake of Childers's success there followed a flood of imitators, including William Le Queux and E. Phillips Oppenheim. The first World War (1914–1918) saw the honing and refinement of modern espionage techniques as all the belligerent powers utilized their intelligence services to obtain military intelligence, to commit acts of"
"novel ""The Mystery of the Sea"" and some short stories have Cruden Bay as their setting. James Macpherson's poem ""The Highlander"" (1758) takes the battle of Cruden as its model. Earliest nearby human traces are evident in nearby Catto Long Barrow, a massive stone structure now surrounded by agricultural fields. The nearby cliff top Slains Castle was begun in 1597 and abandoned and un-roofed for tax purposes in the 1920s. Bishop's Bridge spans Cruden Water and dates from 1697. William Hay, 18th Earl of Erroll, established the fishing community of Port Erroll in the 1840s and 1850s. A functional harbour"
"and 1815 in the War of 1812. It follows the growth of Fell’s Point, the harbor of the city of Baltimore, into a prominent port and the development of the Chesapeake pilot schooner used by its merchants. He discussed the effect of Britain's maritime policies on the development of America’s commercial shipping fleet, as well as a study of Admiral Sir Alexander Cochrane’s period as commander-in-chief of the Royal Navy's North American fleet during that period. Geoffrey M. Footner Geoffrey Marsh Footner (September 1, 1923 – April 5, 2018) was a maritime historian who wrote articles and books about the"
"Articles in the ""Daily Mail"" regularly advocated anti-German sentiments throughout the 20th century, telling British readers to refuse service at restaurants by Austrian or German waiters on the claim that they were spies and told them that if a German-sounding waiter claimed to be Swiss that they should demand to see the waiter's passport. In 1903 Erskine Childers published ""The Riddle of the Sands: A Record of Secret Service"" a novel in which two Englishmen uncover a plot by Germany to Invade England; it was later made into a 1979 film The Riddle of the Sands. At the same time,"
"published in its entirety until 1896, in William Hayden English's ""Conquest of the Northwest"". The ""Memoir"" formed the basis of two popular novels, ""Alice of Old Vincennes"" (1900) by Maurice Thompson, and ""The Crossing"" (1904) by American novelist Winston Churchill. The Illinois campaign was also depicted in ""Long Knife"", a 1979 historical novel by James Alexander Thom. The United States Navy has named four ships USS ""Vincennes"" in honor of that battle. The debate about whether George Rogers Clark ""conquered"" the Northwest Territory for the United States began soon after the Revolutionary War ended, when the government worked to sort"
"of the Sands"" (1903), it predicts the Great War (in which Saki would be killed) and is an example of invasion literature, a literary genre which flourished at the beginning of the 20th century as tensions between the European great powers increased. Much of the book is an argument for compulsory military service, about which there was then a major controversy. The scene in which an Imperial Rescript is announced in a subjugated London, excusing the unmilitary British from serving in the Kaiser's armies, is particularly bitter. There are also several vignettes exemplifying the differences between the English and continental"
"Dublin. The yacht and related artifacts are now on permanent display in an exhibition titled ' Asgard: The 1914 Howth Gun Running Vessel Conserved'. Nessa Childers MEP and her brother Prof. Rory Childers were the guests of honour at the official opening by Arts Minister Jimmy Deenihan. Asgard (yacht) Asgard is a gaff rigged yacht. She was owned by the English-born writer and Irish nationalist Erskine Childers and his wife Molly Childers. She is most noted for her use in the Howth gun-running of 1914. ""Asgard"" is sometimes mistaken for ""Dulcibella"", the boat in Robert Erskine Childers's classic novel ""The"
"the role of foreign prizes in developing British design, the strategy and tactics of cruiser warfare and much more besides."" British Warships in the Age of Sail British Warships in the Age of Sail is a series of four books by maritime historian Rif Winfield comprising a historical reference work providing details of all recorded ships that served or were intended to serve in the Royal Navy from 1603 to 1863. Similar volumes dealing with other navies during the sailing era have followed from the same publisher. The books draw data from Admiralty official records to give details on the"
"which he had already published some essays. His books on ""Colonial Defence and Colonial Opinions"" (1873), ""The Defence of Great and Greater Britain"" (1879), ""Naval Intelligence and the Protection of Commerce"" (1881), ""The Use and the Application of Marine Forces"" (1883), ""Imperial Federation: Naval and Military"" (1887), followed later by other similar works, made him well known among the rising school of Imperialists, and he was returned to parliament (1886–1892) as Conservative member for Bow and Bromley, and afterwards (1895–1906) for Great Yarmouth. In 1887 he was created CMG, and in 1888 . He became a large landowner, when he"
"by the Germans, who will think he has changed sides again. As they sail across the North Sea, Dollmann commits suicide by jumping overboard, presumably to avoid disgrace and probable arrest for treason. An epilogue by the ""editor"" examines the details of a report prepared by Dollmann, outlining his plan for the invasion force. A postscript notes that the Royal Navy is finally taking countermeasures to intercept any German invasion fleet and urges haste. Childers's biographer Andrew Boyle noted: ""For the next ten years Childers's book remained the most powerful contribution of any English writer to the debate on Britain's"
"Asgard (yacht) Asgard is a gaff rigged yacht. She was owned by the English-born writer and Irish nationalist Erskine Childers and his wife Molly Childers. She is most noted for her use in the Howth gun-running of 1914. ""Asgard"" is sometimes mistaken for ""Dulcibella"", the boat in Robert Erskine Childers's classic novel ""The Riddle of the Sands"". This was based on a smaller vessel, ""Vixen"", previously owned by Childers. ""Asgard"" was bought for £1,000 in 1904 (£84,000 in 2006) from one of Norway's most famous boat designers, Colin Archer. The interior was custom built to the specifications of Childers and"
"admiral in the Royal Navy, and Charles Churchill (1656-1714), a general who served on campaign in Europe with his eldest brother John. Little is known of John Churchill's childhood about which he left no written description, but growing up in these impoverished conditions at Ashe, with family tensions soured by conflicting allegiances, may have made a lasting impression on the young Churchill. His descendant and biographer the Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill, asserted that the conditions at Ashe ""might well have aroused in his mind two prevailing impressions: first a hatred of poverty ... and secondly the need of hiding"
"possibly combined with their unusual popularity, helped ensure that he never received the highest academic honours. His single major work in the decade was a two-volume collection of Alan Brooke, 1st Viscount Alanbrooke's diaries with additional commentary, ""The Turn of the Tide"" (1957) and ""The Triumph in the West"" (1959). These books created substantial controversy, given their criticism of Churchill, who was then at the height of his popularity. They are still considered essential reading for understanding the British military during the war. The books he wrote during his later years included several volumes of broad English histories. They include"
"disabled. A parallel may be drawn with Joseph Conrad's career at sea aboard ""Torrens"" 1891–1893. In 1883 he became a clerk in the Meteorological Office until 1889. His reputation was made over the publication of ""The Cruise of the ""Cachalot"""" (1898); and he also wrote, amongst other books, ""Idylls of the Sea"" (1899); ""Sea Wrack"" (1903); ""The Call of the Deep"" (1907) and ""A Compleat Sea Cook"" (1912), besides many articles and essays. He lectured extensively and was highly critical of Australasia's lack of defences against what he saw as imminent naval threats from Germany and Japan. He died at"
"entitled ""The Battle of Dorking"" in ""Blackwoods Magazine"". This was a vivid account of a supposed invasion of England by the Germans after their victory over France: it was subsequently republished in many editions and translations, and is considered a founding piece of the invasion literature genre. He also published several novels, including ""A True Reformer"" (1873) ""The Dilemma"" (1875), ""The Private Secretary"" (1881), and ""The Lesters"" (1893), although none achieved the popular success of ""The Battle of Dorking"". On leaving India in 1892, Chesney was elected to the Parliament of the United Kingdom as a Conservative Party candidate, as"
"The River War The River War: An Historical Account of the Reconquest of the Soudan (1899), by Winston Churchill, concerning his experiences as a British Army officer, during the Mahdist War (1881–99) in the Sudan. ""The River War"" is a history of the British imperial involvement in the Sudan, and the Mahdi War between the British forces, led by Lord Kitchener, and the Dervish forces, led by Khalifa Abdallahi ibn Muhammad, ""The Mahdi”, heir to the self-proclaimed Mahdi Muhammad Ahmad who had embarked on a campaign to conquer Egypt, to drive out the Ottomans. ""The River War"" was Churchill's second"
"his actions (with) the revelation of Churchill’s part in the origin of the tank, and the narrowness of the margin between triumph and disaster at the Dardanelles evoked some new evaluations."" ""The World Crisis"" began as a response to Lord Esher's attack on his actions in 1914 in his book ""The Tragedy of Lord Kitchener"", charging that ""Churchill had slipped away to Belgium on his own while Kitchener was asleep"". But they soon broadened out into a general multi-volume history. The volumes are a mix of military history, written with Churchill's usual narrative flair, diplomatic and political history, portraits of"
"his journey with detailed descriptions of Trindade. He was an influence on children's author Arthur Ransome who used Knight's book ""Sailing"" to teach himself how to sail; and in the Swallows and Amazons series as a resource for his fictional characters, who often refer to ""Knight on Sailing"". Ransome also used Knight's descriptions of Trindade as a model for his fictional Crab Island in the book ""Peter Duck"". Erskine Childers was another author who was influenced by Knight's writing. He used ""The 'Falcon' in the Baltic"" as material for his book ""The Riddle of the Sands"". During 1890, Knight visited"
"Mediterranean, earning himself a Distinguished Service Cross. He was sent back to London in April 1916 to receive his decoration from the king and to serve in the Admiralty. His work here included allocating seaplanes to their intended ships. It took Childers until autumn of that year to extricate himself and train for service with a new coastal motor-boat squadron operating in the English Channel. On 27 July 1917, in the year following the Easter Rising, Sir Horace Plunkett asked for him to be assigned to the secretariat of Prime Minister Lloyd George's Home Rule Convention initiative in Dublin Castle,"
"desirable and inevitable event, and praises rebels and the collective will of the common people in opposing tyrants, including kings like John and Charles I. Our Island Story Our Island Story: A Child's History of England is a book by Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall, first published in 1905 in London by T. C. & E. C. Jack. It covers the history of England from the time of the Roman occupation until Queen Victoria's death, using a mixture of traditional history and mythology to explain the story of British history in a way accessible to younger readers. Prime Minister David Cameron chose"