Funnily enough, the Hohenzollern was actually involved in an impromptu encounter en route to the island, although the details were never revealed to Parliament. Only The Times picked up the story, erroneously claiming that the Hohenzollern had rendezvoused with a squadron of German ironclads on exercise manoeuvres in the North Sea.19 What really happened is recorded in the log-book of HMS Calypso. At 5.40am on 10 August, just off the coast of Borkum, the westernmost of the German Frisian Islands, the Sheerness-bound corvette, with the Seamew and Wildfire, sighted Wilhelm’s steam yacht with its escort of torpedo-boats heading towards Heligoland. Such was the Kaiser’s vanity that protocol had to be observed, even so far out at sea, and there ensued an exchange of masthead flag-hoisting and ceremonial gunfire.20
Brilliant weather greeted the Kaiser’s arrival in Heligoland. The sun shone brightly on what for the visitors was a cheerful scene. The whole island was decorated with flowers and flags, and the streets were full of sailors in smart uniforms and Heligolander girls in their national costume. The stairs to the Oberland were crowded with people going up and down, and all was excitement and expectation. From the Oberland a rare naval sight was presented to view. All the warships were bedecked with brightly coloured signalling flags. The manoeuvring squadron had positioned itself 2 miles out to sea, anchored in two lines. The warship Kaiser, on the right of the outside line, was flanked by the Deutschland, the Frederich de Grosse and the Prussen. The inner line also rode at anchor, somewhat closer in shore, with the artillery training ship Mars nearby. Standing on the bridge of the Hohenzollern, the German monarch steamed up to the island, between 11am and noon. The imperial yacht approached the German warships from the south-west, and amid the thunder of salutes from the warships made its way between the two lines. Then it steamed round the island, to the delight of the German crowds watching from the Oberland.
The Heligolanders, having had no time to reflect on the British departure, began to feel apprehensive as the unfamiliar fleet lingered off their island like a shoal of hungry sharks. Their initial alarm was caused by the disembarkation of some three thousand German marines in full uniform. The prospect of seeing the Kaiser meant that throughout the morning more and more jubilant visitors arrived from the mainland. Never before had there been so many people on Heligoland. The Germans indulged in every possible form of rejoicing just before lunch when Wilhelm jauntily stepped ashore at the landing stage.
He was greeted by von Bötticher, the two naval and civil governors of the island, and a variety of high-ranking military and official personages in full uniform. A souvenir was presented to him by a committee of Heligolanders, and a number of young Heligoland girls in national costume presented a tribute of flowers in the shape of an immense floral anchor in the Heligoland colours of green, red and white. Then a procession formed up and, walking at its head, the Kaiser paraded slowly through the densely crowded streets, from the Unterland to the Oberland, where a field service was to be performed near the Lighthouse tower. The imperial procession halted within a square formed by about three thousand sailors and marines drawn up in ranks. Wilhelm took his place a short distance in front of the field altar, which had been erected in the centre of the square between two flagpoles. The military chaplain spoke impressively of the day’s events in his sermon, as the Kaiser and all his troops stood with their heads uncovered. At the close of the service, an imperial proclamation by the Emperor was read out by von Bötticher:
The government of Heligoland and its surroundings has, in consequence of a treaty with her Majesty the Queen of Great Britain and Ireland, been transferred to myself. The former relationship to the German Empire is restored by peaceful means to the German Fatherland, to the annals of which it pertains both by position and circumstance. By community of language and interests you were hitherto related to your German brethren. Thanks to the wisdom of your previous rulers these features have sustained little alteration during the period of your loyalty to the powerful British Empire. With so much pleasure does every German subject, along with myself, welcome your reunion with the German people and the Fatherland. I reserve to myself according to treaty, to decide the immediate form of government, but as I now take possession of Heligoland gloriously and for ever for myself and my successors, I trust to the acknowledged prudence of all Heligolanders who wish to become German that they remain unbroken in loyalty to myself and the Fatherland. On the other hand, I promise my protection and my utmost care both for yourselves and your rights. I shall ensure that justice will be impartially administered to all, and that your local laws and customs shall, as far as possible, remain unaltered. A well-meaning and guarded policy will also be essayed in the future to promote your welfare and increase the economic value of the island. In order to ameliorate the transfer, with its new surroundings, all now living males will remain exempt from military or naval service, all rights of property which have been acquired either by private persons or corporations under the British rule in Heligoland will remain in force. The fulfilment of these promises will be the aim of myself and my government. The retention of the faith of your fathers, the care of your church and schools, will have my earnest attention. I receive with pleasure Heligoland into the wreath of German islands which surround the shores of the Fatherland. May the return to Germany, the participation in its glory, its independence, and freedom be the care of yourselves and your descendants!
The proclamation was received with loud cheering by the massed Germans present and affixed in public places later in the day. Just before the hoisting of his imperial standard and the German flag, the Kaiser was expected to address his new subjects directly. In sharp contrast to the reassuringly honeyed words from von Bötticher the previous day, Wilhelm’s speech effectively disregarded the islanders as he barked with a rasping voice:
Comrades of the Navy! Four days ago I celebrated the Battle of Wörth, at which my revered grandfather and my father gave the first hammer-stroke towards the formation of the German Empire. Now twenty years have gone by, and I, Wilhelm II, German Emperor, King of Prussia, reincorporate this island with the German Fatherland without war and without bloodshed, as the last piece of German earth. The island is chosen as a bulwark in the sea, a protection to German fisheries, a central point for my ships of war, a place and harbour of safety in the German Ocean against all enemies who may dare to show themselves upon it. I hereby take possession of this land, whose inhabitants I greet, and in token thereof I command that my standard be hoisted, and by its side that of my Navy.
When the older inhabitants of the island heard the Kaiser speak so fiercely for the first time many felt their eyes filling with tears. The Heligolanders huddled together, outnumbered on their own island. But it was too late now for them to feel maudlin towards Britain. Characteristically they had been too slow to act. For ever more they would probably have to pay the price for their complacence in not demanding a plebiscite on the cession. Their changed circumstances became still more apparent to them when the imperial flag was hoisted in the presence of their new monarch. At that moment a salute of 21 guns was taken up by all the German warships anchored offshore. After eating at Government House the Emperor made a short tour through the little town. At 4pm he departed from Heligoland on the Hohenzollern, amid the acclamation of the tourists and trippers, and yet another salute from the squadron.
That evening, when Wilhelm had triumphantly led his warships home to the German mainland, the chief Heligolanders had several reasons to be alarmed, not least because of the dishonest declarations made by their new monarch. Wilhelm’s proclamation had claimed that Heligoland had been ‘restored’ to the German Fatherland: ‘By community of language and interests you were hitherto related to your German brethren.’ Yet the Heligolanders knew they had never been German, nor had their island; it had only ever been Danish or British. Similarly, at the meal in Government House he had spoken of his delight that the island had come into his possession ‘with the free will’ of the islanders – although he must
have known that the Heligolanders had not sought the cession; indeed, they had not even been consulted, much less given it their approval. The German public had been led to believe that the cession was a ‘gracious gift’ from Britain. At the luncheon Wilhelm had alluded to the ‘friendly gift of the island from Her Majesty to myself’. The Heligolanders were in no position to know that Queen Victoria had personally opposed the cession, but Wilhelm had doubtless had several difficult conversations with his grandmother at Osborne and can have been in no doubt about her true feelings on the matter.
Meanwhile, by lunchtime on Monday 11 August HMS Calypso had conveyed the Barklys in fine weather to the edge of the Thames Estuary at Sheerness. She then chugged upstream to Chatham where her damaged cutter was to be replaced. The Barklys were taken by pinnace from the anchorage to Sheerness pier, where they were reunited with the rest of their party, who had arrived on the Wildfire only an hour before. That weekend Arthur had been at the epicentre of an international event, but now he was no longer a governor and so there was no reception to mark his return. Later that evening the Barklys arrived by train in Kensington. Fanny later recalled in her memoirs: ‘We were thankful to rest quietly, after undergoing so much fatigue and excitement, not to speak of the very hard work of having to quit the island at such short notice.’21
The leading article about the hand-over in The Times that morning incorrectly stated that on 9 August: ‘The imperial standard floated above the Union Jack until sundown, when both flags were hauled down.’ It was at the very end of a long report, and it was only a minor slip, but Arthur was unable to resist the temptation of writing a corrective letter, which the paper published on 21 August.
Sir,
The Times report of 11 August is wrong. The two flags floated together on the same mast, at precisely the same height until sundown, when the Union Jack was hauled down by a naval detachment from HMS Calypso and brought home on that ship.
Yours,
Arthur Barkly
The letter had the effect of drawing the attention of the Colonial Office to the forgotten story. When staff scrutinised the article more closely, they found mention of a royal coat of arms still fixed to a wall in Government House when the Kaiser had lunched there. The finicky Colonial Office now demanded to know why Barkly had not had it removed, then wanted to check the inventory of artefacts brought home on the Calypso. Such was the ill-feeling that Arthur, now aged forty-seven, became anxious about his prospects of getting a further governorship. He was already depressed by the transfer of Heligoland to Germany, and this new worry seriously affected his health. During a visit to Stapleton Park, the country estate of Fanny’s brother in Pontefract, he was taken ill and died there on 27 September 1890, just seven weeks after the cession.
Circumstances were equally miserable for the large Whitehead family. The Colonel was given an annual salary of just £50 by the Colonial Office, and even that was on condition that he was not appointed to another post while receiving it.22 Whitehead sought compensation and in April 1891 was asking the Colonial Office why his letters on the subject went unanswered. Eventually, in August that year, he was offered a one-off payment of just £200. Insulted and aghast, he complained to the Colonial Office that he regarded it as totally insufficient.
Aware that her late husband had only grudgingly been reimbursed his small expenses for the Berlin trip, the newly widowed Frances was now informed that the Colonial Office would pay him an imperial salary and lodging allowance of just £3 a week up to the date of his death.23 There was worse to come. When Arthur died, she learnt that the only money she and her five children could expect from the Colonial Office for his years of service was a pension of just £50 a year. Letters in support of the Barklys were posted to The Times and the Colonial Office by Ernest Maxse and other influential figures. Publicly shamed into taking action, the Colonial Office increased the pension to £350.
To make ends meet Frances commenced a career as an author, producing Among Boers and Basutos, the story of her life in South Africa with Arthur, and then in 1898 From the Tropics to the North Sea, a dignified account, without a trace of bitterness, of their time on Heligoland. Although she achieved some literary success, in monetary terms it was not enough. She and her young family were still obliged to rely on the generosity of her father-in-law, Sir Henry Barkly. Queen Victoria herself became involved, to the extent that she granted Fanny a grace and favour apartment at Hampton Court Palace. This was a very unusual step for a Colonial Service family, and perhaps indicates the sense of conscience Victoria appears to have suffered about abandoning Heligoland.
6
The Riddle of the Sands
On 11 August 1897 a small cutter-rigged yacht hoisted sail, slipped quietly out of Dover harbour and headed southwards. At the helm of the 28ft Vixen was its owner, Erskine Childers. A cousin of Hugh Childers, a former Chancellor of the Exchequer and Secretary of State for War, who had been a member of the Carnarvon Commission on Imperial Defence, young Erskine was by profession a House of Lords committee clerk. He was intent on taking his converted ex-lifeboat on a leisurely summer voyage to the Mediterranean. But after crossing to France the Vixen was delayed in Boulogne by inclement winds blowing from the east. That chance patch of unseasonal weather caused Childers to make a highly momentous decision: abruptly abandoning his plans he set course instead for the Baltic. En route, during the next few weeks, the Vixen island-hopped between the many Frisian Islands along the Dutch and north-west German coasts. In response to what he discovered in those parts, Childers wrote his influential book The Riddle of the Sands, a semi-autobiographical thriller largely based on his 1897 voyage – though even a mind as wide-ranging as Childers’s could scarcely grasp the magnitude of the consequences which the so-called Heligoland–Zanzibar swap was having in Africa.
However heartless, and unprincipled, Salisbury’s epic swap deal had been, its timing had been guided by pure genius. He had secured it at the precise high water mark of Britain’s bargaining power with Germany. For a few weeks that summer the German newspapers reflected the German nation’s romantic tide of goodwill towards Britain for ceding Heligoland. That mood soon changed, initially with some sympathy for the freelance coloniser Dr Karl Peters. In March 1890 he had induced Mwanga, King of Uganda, to sign a treaty placing his kingdom under German protection. When Peters reached the coast opposite Zanzibar at Bagamoya on 16 July, after an arduous journey from Lake Victoria, he was astounded to hear that the territory he had just acquired for the Fatherland had been given to England. His emotions were running so high that – as he stated in his book New Light on Dark Africa – he needed to withdraw into a private room for two hours to regain his composure. He later furiously exclaimed that the kingdoms of Witu and Uganda had been sacrificed ‘for a bath-tub in the North Sea’!
Ironically, the central figure in Germany’s growing condemnation of the Heligoland swap was Prince Otto von Bismarck himself. Since his dismissal by Kaiser Wilhelm II in March 1890, the embittered former imperial Chancellor had turned against his successor, his former protégé Count Caprivi. Bismarck’s devoted supporters could never accept his unfortunate successor. Everything Caprivi did they ridiculed and condemned, while the agrarian Conservatives despised his lack of landed property. Caprivi’s difficulties were greatly exacerbated because Prince Bismarck entered the fight against him with all his characteristic energy. That summer he famously denounced the exchanging of so many African concessions for Heligoland as trading ‘a whole suit of clothes for a trouser button’.
The wisdom of the swap, which had been one of the high-points of the German political year in 1890, became a significant factor in the demolition of Caprivi’s credibility. Had Heligoland been acquired in the chancellorship of Prince Bismarck, it would probably have been valued very highly. Under Caprivi, it simply let loose a flood of criticism. Many years later Kaiser Wilhelm II glumly recalled in his memoirs:
It was merely Caprivi, the usurper, who had the audacity to sit in Bisma
rck’s chair, and the ‘ungrateful’ and ‘impulsive’ young master who had done such a thing! Had Bismarck only wished he could have had the old rock any day, but he never would have been so unskilful as to give up to the English for it the very promising African possessions, and he never would have allowed himself to be thus worsted. That was the sort of thing heard almost everywhere.
Curious, indeed, were the criticisms of the exchange, particularly the loss of Zanzibar and Witu, indulged in by the Bismarckian press, which had previously always explained that Bismarck had little belief in the value of colonies in themselves and looked upon them merely as objects of barter. His successor acted in accordance with these ideas in the matter of Heligoland – and was subsequently violently criticised and vilified. Supporters of Karl Peters and all manner of nationalists compared Caprivi to the simpleton in the fairy tale Jack and the Beanstalk, who naively exchanged a healthy cow for a few beans.
The deluge of criticism gathered in strength to such an extent that on 10 December 1890, when the Reichstag met to consider a somewhat belated bill concerning the incorporation of Heligoland into the Kingdom of Prussia, Bismarck himself publicly condemned the exchange. Late in 1891, at Friedrichsruhe, his country estate, he outlined his personal thinking on the question of Caprivi’s East Africa policy and Heligoland during a private after-dinner conversation with his biographer, Dr Moritz Busch:
Zanzibar ought not to have been left to the English. It would have been better to maintain the old arrangement. We could have had it some time later when England required our good offices against France or Russia. In the meantime our merchants, who are cleverer and satisfied with smaller profits, would have kept the upper hand in business. To regard Heligoland as an equivalent shows more imagination than sound calculation. In the event of war it would be better for us that it should be in the hands of a neutral power. It is difficult and most expensive to fortify.
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