Riddle Of The Sands

Fiction, Erskine Childers 1903, Beaverton Library?

Spy/Adventure novel. 260 pages, skimmed. Inspired The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan.

Caruthers joins Davies on his shallow-draft sailboat Dilcibella to spy on (what turn out to be) German preparations of the East Frisian Islands for an invasion of England. The novel was very popular, and inspired British rearmament before World War 1, including the fortification of the shallow East Coast in order to repel the invasion hypothesized in this book.

Childers is more interesting than his novel. He joined the successful fight for Irish independence, which was followed by the Irish Civil War ( between Sinn Féin and the IRA ) in 1922. Childers befriended Michael Collins, who gave him a revolver. Childers was executed by an Irish military firing squad in 1922. His son Erskine Hamilton Childers was 4th President of Ireland in 1973.