He arrives to find that Davies has a small sailing boat (the vessel is named Dulcibella, a reference to Childers's own sister of that name), not the comfortable crewed yacht that he expected. Carruthers agrees, as his other plans for a holiday have fallen through, and because of a heartbreak due to a woman he courted becoming engaged to another man. Navigating a small boat under these conditions requires a specialized kind of skilled seamanship, of which the character Davies is an unsurpassed master, and the descriptions of his feats are of abiding interest to yachting enthusiasts, quite apart from their role in the book's espionage plot.Ĭarruthers, a minor official in the Foreign Office, is contacted by an acquaintance, Davies, asking him to join in a yachting holiday in the Baltic Sea.
The same is true for the various "sands" of the title – vast areas which are flooded at high tide but become mudflats at ebb. It was a spy novel that "established a formula that included a mass of verifiable detail, which gave authenticity to the story – the same ploy that would be used so well by John Buchan, Ian Fleming, John le Carré and many others." All of the physical background is completely authentic – the various Frisian islands and towns named in the book actually exist and the descriptions of them accurate (often, from the author's own experience). The novel "owes a lot to the wonderful adventure novels of writers like Rider Haggard, that were a staple of Victorian Britain". It has been made into feature-length films for both cinema and television. The book, which enjoyed immense popularity in the years before World War I, is an early example of the espionage novel and was extremely influential in the genre of spy fiction. Winston Churchill later credited it as a major reason that the Admiralty decided to establish naval bases at Invergordon, the Firth of Forth and Scapa Flow.The Riddle of the Sands: A Record of Secret Service is a 1903 novel by Erskine Childers. The book enjoyed immense popularity in the years before World War I and was extremely influential. It is often called the first modern spy novel, although others are as well, it was certainly very influential in the genre and for its time.
The plot involves the uncovering of secret German preparations for an invasion of the United Kingdom. It was one of the early invasion novels which predicted war with Germany and called for British preparedness.
Download cover art Download CD case insert The Riddle of the SandsĬontaining many realistic details based on Childers' own sailing trips along the German North Sea coast, the book is the retelling of a yachting expedition in the early 20th century combined with an adventurous spy story.
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