by Andrew Cook
Advertisement in Vozdukhoplavatel announcing the opening of the Krylia Aerodrome in September 1910 another Reilly project financed by other people’s money.
Suvorin invited the famous Russian aviator Nikolai Evgrafovich Popov to open the office, and arranged for the event to be exclusively covered by Novoe Vremia. The company was the first to commercially market aircraft in Russia. Reilly’s interest in aviation had apparently been kindled by Wilbur Wright’s demonstration of the ‘Wright Flyer’ at the Hunaudières Racecourse at Le Mans in August 1908. The Wrights had, by this time, concluded that there was more to be gained from displaying their machines in public than from continued secrecy. It is clear from the European press at the time that there was certainly widespread scepticism concerning the merits of the Wright aircraft owing to their publicity-shy reputation. This attitude changed dramatically when Wilbur Wright arrived in France three months before the Le Mans demonstration and began touting the merits of the 1905 ‘Flyer’, a machine capable of flying up to twenty-five miles at a time when Henry Farman was endeavouring to achieve one kilometre in his Voisin.
Reilly was among the large crowd that gathered at Hunaudières on 8 August to watch Wilbur Wright take to the air. All scepticism vanished as he rose to a height of thirty feet and made three circuits of the racecourse before making a perfect landing within fifty metres of where he had taken off. Louis Bleriot, who was also in the crowd, told the New York Herald that, ‘for us in France and everywhere, a new era in mechanical flight has begun… my view can best be conveyed in the words – it is marvellous!’
The new era reached Germany the following year, when Orville Wright visited Berlin to give a similar flying demonstration. Reilly arranged to meet him afterwards and discovered the Wrights planned to withdraw from active participartion in flying demonstrations in order to concentrate on the commercial exploitation of their machines. When, the following year, they launched the Wright Brothers Company, Reilly shrewdly negotiated an agreement to be their sole representative within the Russian Empire and to market their aircraft there. Before too long Reilly had also signed a similar deal with the Farman Company.
The objective of Krylia was, according to Suvorin, to ‘assist the development of aeronautics and aviation in Russia’. This, however, did not extend to organising the St Petersburg–Moscow air race, which was in fact a competition rather than a race, meaning that competitors were judged on performance in certain areas and not just on their times.
It was actually organised by the Imperial Aero-Club of St Petersburg and the Moscow Aeronautical Society. There is no record of Krylia or Reilly in particular providing any of the sponsorship. The event cost 107,500 roubles, which was met by a donation of 100,000 roubles from the Russian government, the remainder being made up of smaller sums donated by the Imperial Aero Club, the Moscow Aeronautical Society, Moscow City Council, the Riga Section of the Imperial Aero Club, the Imperial Russian Automobile Society, and the Russian Hunting Club. The Nobel Oil Company and the Vacuum Oil Company donated their products to the event.35 Lockhart is correct in stating that the competition was won by Vasilyev, although it is unlikely that Reilly was there to meet him in Moscow. After landing in Moscow, Vasilyev publicly lambasted the organisers of the event for incom-petence. The Imperial Aero Club retaliated by boycotting his victor’s banquet, which as a consequence had to be cancelled!36
Reilly can, however, justifiably claim the credit for founding St Petersburg’s first airport.37 According to Vladimir Krymov, this too was an example of Reilly knowing something no one else knew. He had found out that, under an eighteenth-century right of use going back to the time of Peter the Great, the Commandant of St Petersburg had the right to use a large piece of land on the outskirts of the city, known as Komendantskoe Pole (the Commandant’s Field). In practice, however, this right had never been taken up. Reilly also discovered that the long-term tenant of the land was an elderly Englishwoman who was paying a small annual rent and sub-letting plots to allotment keepers. Reilly traced her and arranged to pay her a visit. In Krymov’s words, ‘Reilly charmed her with his manners and beautiful English and obtained from her the right to let the whole field as an aerodrome’.38
To provide capital for the aerodrome venture, Alexei Suvorin was persuaded to become a backer. Work to convert the land to an aerodrome with hangers and workshops was completed in time for Krylia to host the first St Petersburg Flying Week, held between 25 April and 2 May 1910.39 Aviators from France, Belgium, Switzerland and Holland, as well as Russia, took part and prizes were awarded for height reached and length of time spent in the air. The Russians enthusiastically supported their own man, Popov, who came second and flew the highest.40 The main purpose of the event was, however, a commercial opportunity for the display and sale of aircraft, from which Krylia did particularly well. In May 1911 a second flying week was held, during which Reilly himself participated as one of the aviators. While the aerodrome was a great success, Krymov was at pains to point out that, as a result of Reilly’s aerodrome business dealings, and having power of attorney from Alexei Suvorin, he had to honour several promissory notes issued by Suvorin. This resulted in Suvorin losing over 100,000 roubles, while Reilly avoided liability and collected a salary as a Krylia director.41
While fully engaged in exploiting the providence brought about by the onset of the aviation age, Reilly lost no opportunity to cash in on the escalating naval arms race that was now gaining pace among the great powers. Procuring Russian maritime contracts on behalf of Blohm and Voss was not, however, the limit of Reilly’s brokering ambitions. Constantinople, the capital city of the sprawling Ottoman Empire on Russia’s southern border, was not only well known to Reilly but was a ready market for German armaments. Indeed, a decade later when working undercover in Russian, Reilly would adopt, among other identities, that of Turkish merchant ‘Mr Constantine’.
Although regarded by Germany as being in terminal decline, an alliance with the faltering Ottoman Empire was seen as key to Berlin’s plan for imperial expansion eastwards. Sultan Abdul Hamid was equally looking for a new and powerful European ally to act as a bulwark against Russia, the Turks’ traditional foe, following his falling out with Great Britain over the control of Egypt. In the decade before the outbreak of the First World War, the Turks therefore looked principally to their new-found German ally to help them develop a twentieth-century army and navy. However, competition for orders was fierce and Blohm & Voss were having little success in obtaining major naval contracts. Since May 1904 they had been represented in Constantinople by one Walther Berghaus.42 From July 1905, when the first announcement of the rebuilding of the Turkish navy was made, until March 1909, not a single deal was successfuly negotiated for Blohm & Voss by Berghaus.
On 7 December 1909 Berghaus wrote to Blohm & Voss questioning the status of a Herr Reilly, who had recently arrived in Constantinople and was representing himself as acting on behalf of Blohm & Voss.43 Reilly had good contacts in the Ottoman capital where both Ginsburg & Company and the East-Asiatic Company, for example, were well established and had good connections with Ottoman government officials. What transpired during the next three months is very much open to conjecture, as little of the correspondence between the company and Berghaus has survived. However, we do know that on 9 February 1910 Blohm & Voss wrote to Berghaus, formally dismissing him as their Ottoman representative. It would seem that they had come to the conclusion that he had passed on compromising information to a rival company.44 The prime source of the allegations against him would appear to be ‘Herr R’. With Berghaus now deposed, Reilly set about negotiating with the Ottoman authorities and on 14 February the Turkish navy agreed to send a delegation to Germany to finalise a deal to purchase one battleship and a floating dock from Blohm & Voss.45 Reilly took the commission for the deal, leaving Berghaus out in the cold. Little further trace of Reilly’s activites in Constantinople appear in either German or Ottoman records, suggesting that his endeavours there on behalf of Blohm & V
oss were shortlived. This view is further confirmed by the fact that on 6 September 1911, Blohm & Voss reappointed Berghaus as their Ottoman representative.46
According to Vladimir Krymov, Reilly’s finances before the First World War were ‘dire’,47 a situation that was not remedied until the outbreak of war when the arms trade came to his rescue. Throughout his life Reilly seemed to spend money as quickly as he obtained it. One consequence of this was a short spell of having to share a flat during the autumn of 1911. His flatmate was apparently one Eduard Fedorovich Gofman. Not long after the flat-share arrangement began, Gofman was found dead, a bullet in his head and a pistol in his hand.48 Police enquiries revealed that a large sum of money was missing from his employers the East-Asiatic Company, which Gofman had apparently embezzled. According to the police, a suicide note had been found stating that Gofman had lost the money gambling. Gofman was not a known gambler and the police could find no evidence that he had ever frequented any of the usual gambling haunts in St Petersburg. Reilly too stated that he had no knowledge of his flatmate being a gambler. The police were never able to solve the riddle and the money was never recovered. If Reilly had a hand in the embezzlement, Gofman’s death or the disappearance of the money, he had, once again, managed to avoid the consequences.
If Reilly’s finances were, in Vladimir Krymov’s words, ‘dire’, then it was down, as ever, to his expensive tastes and lifestyle. If his income was in any doubt, he would not be travelling throughout Europe and staying at such hotels as the Cecil in London, the Grand Hotel in Paris and the Hotel Bristol in Berlin and Vienna. Neither would he have been a regular at St Petersburg’s exclusive Vienna Restaurant in Ulitsa Gogolya and the Café de Paris at 16 Bolshaya Morskaya, next door to the East-Asiatic Company. The Café de Paris49 was better known by the name of its owner, Kiuba. It was a chic restaurant with French cuisine and high prices and was frequented by the high aristocracy. The artist Milashevsky recalls that ‘all the waiters were formerly soldiers of the Guard and so they never take his Highness for his nobleness’. It was the first restaurant to have an electric sign – each letter in the word was made of electric lamps – ‘may your name shine forever’ was an in-joke among Kiuba’s customers at the time.
In addition to the Café de Paris, Reilly also frequented the St Petersburg English Club at 16 Dvortsovaia Naberezhnaia, where the aristocratic élite gambled at cards. Card gambling became particularly widespread during the first decade of the twentieth century, and flourished most of all in the so-called ‘new-style clubs’ or businessmen’s clubs. The English Club was the oldest in St Petersburg, and although founded by the English community in 1770, it was, by the late nineteenth century, a thoroughly Russian institution. Reilly, although an enthusiastic card player, was rarely a successful one. The club was, however, yet another opportunity to associate with the influential élite of St Petersburg.
Another costly expense that Reilly may well have faced was that of medical treatment. As we shall see later in our story, the likelihood was that he suffered throughout his life from a mild form of epilepsy, known as petit mal. This milder form has associations with migraine, something we know Reilly regularly experienced. We also know, for example, that between 2 March and 6 March 1911, Reilly stayed at the Weiner Cottage Sanitarium in Vienna,50 although no details of the treatment he received have survived.
Despite the fact that he represented himself as an Irishman with a Russian mother, Reilly did not openly associate himself with the self-styled ‘English colony’ in St Petersburg. By the turn of the twentieth century there were some 4,000 British citizens in St Petersburg, most of them living on the Vasilyevsky Ostroff or in the mill districts. Many families had lived in Russia for several generations, and avoided having to become Russian citizens by sending pregnant wives back to England to give birth. It was from among this community that the ‘New English Club’51 was founded in 1905. Unlike the English Club, it was essentially an English membership institution where members drank Scotch whisky and English beer, played football, cricket, golf and billiards and held dinners to mark British national holidays. Among its 400 members was the club president, Ernest Durrent, and his nephew Alfred Hill, who joined British intelligence in the war.52 Alfred’s cousin, George Hill, would also become an intelligence officer and an associate of Reilly’s in the aftermath of the October Revolution of 1917. Another member of the club, Cecil Mackie, who was a secretary at the British Embassy in St Petersburg, later recalled that, ‘at one time we had some doubt as to his right to British nationality, but the matter was never thrashed out’.53
It would take a world war to provide Reilly with the opportunity of making more money than he could actually spend. In the meantime, the ubiquitous wheeler-dealer soldiered on with mixed results in the scramble for naval contracts. A letter written by Reilly on 25 April 1912 to Kurt Orbanowsky gives some very pertinent clues to his relationship with the various players involved in the naval warship programme. The purpose of the letter was, ostensibly, to explain why Blohm & Voss had not been successful with a particular tender:
Dear Mr Orbanowsky,
Yesterday evening I looked into the dock dossier and gather from this that the rejection of our project and the acceptance of the Russian or English offer resulted mainly from technical reasons.
I am at a loss to judge to what extent the General Director K, on the basis of purely technical decisions, can contend the fait accompli. The only contentious point I could discover was that the weight was incorrectly given, for in the N54 project the weight is 15310 and not 15910 – thus, the difference between the two projects is not nearly so great. There is no doubt that a second swindle occurred with the price, and that RSO have been informed about the price of the N project, but this cannot be proved. The final price of RSO project is 4,800,000 roubles (earlier it was 4,960,000). The final price from N is 4,930,500 roubles (compared to 5,175,000 roubles earlier). The final N price is 4,709,000 has for some reason gone totally without mention.
The Count55 informed me yesterday that the General Director K takes great comfort in the hope (I believe as a result of his discussions yesterday with Georg) that the decisions can be changed to his favour. My most recent information is that it is more or less a waste of energy
The engineer from the technical committee who will supervise construction of the dock steamed to England yesterday at the expense of RSO. I heard yesterday from my friend Grigorovich, who is in the south with Georg, that progress made by RSO in their shipyard construction is very admirable. Georg is convinced that everything RSO has ordered will be ready by the date and has sent an enthusiastic telegram to SM. In contrast, Georg found that the situation at N is extremely miserable. Furthermore, I hear that P is as good as delivered and that B himself will leave soon as a precaution. I also hear that Professor B’s days in the interdepartmental commission are numbered because there is opposition to his belonging to the Nicolai direction at the same time.
The general opinion among them is that the gr.Kr56 project will be built after the Admiralty plans. I was strongly advised that you and Bisch should contact Georg often to keep him continuously informed about Putt and their suggestions. Georg is very interested in this and it is very important that his interest is maintained and that in the future he is informed about us directly by you or Bisch and not from P or B. I am furthermore told (but I must have your word that this remains between you and I) that Jach is very unwelcome at Georg’s and that in our own interests we should not send him there. You know how dear this common friend is to me but I consider it my duty to tell you this. It is doubtful whether it is planned to build the gr.Kr in Germany, and indeed there are national and political reasons for this. In regard to the kl.Kr,57 it is probable that no one except B and V would be considered.
On 25 April 1912 Reilly hypocritically complained to Obanowsky of insider dealing.
It can be assumed that the programme will be settled in the Duma at the start of May; there is no doubt that money will be re
ceived. Serious work should get going immediately after Easter and the contracts will be allocated by the end of July. During the holidays I will have various opportunities to see my friends and will work with them on the aspects that interest you. For now and wishing you the most pleasant of holidays,
Your very loyal
Sidney G. Reilly58
In reality, the letter is a subtle example of Reilly’s ‘divide and rule’ approach to life. He not only casts aspersions on the judgement of Count Lubiensky and his ability to get a more favourable verdict on the proposal, he also tries, in a very underhanded way, to drive a wedge between Orbanowsky and his ‘dear friend’, Lubiensky’s senior colleague Jachimowitz. Ironically, Reilly is the first to complain in this letter about the ‘insider-information’ swindles being perpetrated on Blohm & Voss, but his own hands were far from clean when it came to obtaining the particulars of rival tenders. In September of that year, Sir Charles Ottley, of the British shipbuilders Armstrongs, visited St Petersburg with a view to tendering for contracts.59 Although Armstrongs had initially shown some reluctance to participate, they seem to have been persuaded to do so by Alexei Rastedt, who was ultimately appointed their Russian representative. Alexei Rastedt was no newcomer to the shipping business, and had, several years previously, been one of Reilly’s ‘background men’. When eventually Armstrongs did decide to enter a last-minute tender, this caused much friction between themselves and their Tyne- side neighbours, Vickers, which was gleefully picked up by the St Petersburg press. When the contracts were eventually awarded, there was a very strong suspicion that Armstrong’s bid had been reported to one of their rivals.