New Arabian Nights: by Robert Louis Stevenson (Chatto and Windus, 1882).
pis aller: last resort.
voie douloureuse: path of sorrows.
Flensburg: western Germany’s most northerly large city, situated in Schleswig Holstein. Under Danish rule, it became the capital of Schleswig in 1848 and was occupied by Prussia after the German–Danish War of 1864.
Bradshaw: George Bradshaw (1801–53) was the originator of railway guides. Bradshaw’s Railway Time Tables appeared in 1839 and became Bradshaw’s Monthly Railway Guide in 1841.
faute de mieux: for lack of anything better.
Frisian Islands: a low-lying chain of islands from 3 to 20 miles off the north-European mainland, extending in an arc from near the port of Den Helder (north-west Netherlands), east along the Dutch and German coasts as far as the River Elbe and north along the coast of Schleswig-Holstein (western Germany) and the southern coast of the Jutland Peninsula (Denmark). The West Frisian Islands belong to the Netherlands, the East Frisian Islands belong to Germany, and the North Frisian Islands are divided between Germany and Denmark.
Texel: an inhabited island with a large area of polder or land reclaimed from the Wadden Zee.
Dutch Islands: Texel, Vlieland, Terschelling, Ameland, and Schlermonnikog and the virtually uninhabited Simonszand, Boschplaat, Rottumerplaat, and Rottum.
German Islands: Borkum, Juist, Norderney, Baltrum, Langeoog, Spiekeroog, and Wangeroog which have scattered farmsteads and small villages. Scharhörn is uninhabited and Neuwerk has only lighthouse keepers. Borkum and Nordeney are popular resorts.
Falcon: Edward Frederick Knight’s The ‘Falcon’ on the Baltic (W. H. Allen, 1888). In the novel, Knight (1852–1925), British yachtsman and author, writes of his voyage to Copenhagen in a converted lifeboat (Falcon). Knight, like Childers, in life and writing explored the East Frisian Islands. The Falcon became a favourite reference book for amateur yachtsmen.
‘hardy Corinthian’ style: the shameless or brazen style of storytelling of Corinthians; amateur yachtsmen who sail their own yacht without the aid of a professional skipper.
mattinala: dawn music.
Sonderburg: port and seaside town in Denmark on the south-west coast of Als Island. The city was destroyed in 1864 during a Prussian attack on Danish trenches near Dybbol. Dybbol Mill became a national symbol because of fierce Danish resistance.
Mahan’s Life of Nelson: Alfred Thayer Mahan (1840–1914), American naval officer and historian, published The Life of Nelson: The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain (2 vols.) in 1897.
Brassey’s Naval Annual: Thomas Brassey (1836–1918), naval expert and author, published his first Naval Annual in 1886 and continued to edit the publication for many years.
Mahan’s Influence of Sea Power: A. T. Mahan’s The Influence of Sea Power Upon History 1660–1783 (1890) and The Influence of Sea Power Upon the French Revolution and Empire 1793–1812 (1892) were the basis of Mahan’s fame as the first ‘philosopher of sea power’. Mahan reads history as a series of naval battles and charts the traffic patterns of those battles: the books were considered the ABC of nineteenth-century military geography. They served as propaganda for naval expansion in Great Britain, Germany, and America. Kaiser Wilhelm II remarked that he had the books on all his ships.
‘Guten Abend; wo fahren Sie hin?’: Good evening, where are you going?
Kaiser Wilhelm Ship Canal: Built between 1887 and 1895, the Kiel canal (known as the Kaiser Wilhelm canal prior to World War I) joins Brunsbüttclkoog, on the North Sea, and Holtenau, on the Baltic Sea. The canal is 61 miles long and is the most expedient and economical route between the two seas. The canal was owned by the German government until it was internationalized by the Treaty of Versailles (1919) (see also pp. 74 and 87).
abschneiden: to cut off.
durch Wallen: through tidal mud flats.
Verslehen Sie?: do you understand?
Emperor: Germany defeated the Danish in 1864, the Austrians in 1866 in the Seven Weeks’ War, and franco in 1871 (Franco-German War) when Bismarck unified Germany under emperor King William I of Prussia. The ‘emperor’ referred to here is William II (1859–1941), German emperor and king of Prussia from 1888 to 1918. The emperor set about to challenge British naval domination through the German Naval Bills of 1898 and 1900.
déshabille: negligee.
Dilke: Charles Wentworth Dilke (1843–1911), politician and author, wrote on issues of Britain and imperialism: The British Army (1888), The British Empire (1899), and Problems of Greater Britain (1890). Dilke travelled widely and was an enthusiastic oarsman.
ABC: A. T. Mahan.
sea-power: Chancellor Bernhard, Fürst von Billow (1900–9) capitalized on Germany’s desire for imperial greatness by securing the support of Conservative Prussian landowners for Pan-German policies. Germany’s iron and steel industry made her Europe’s strongest industrial power and Bülow rejected alliances with Britain in 1898 and 1909, instead rapidly developing the German Navy. Grandiose naval expansion plans were thought to be essential for the imperialist agenda.
Heligoland: (also Helgoland) an island in the German Bay of the North Sea. It lies between the coast of Schleswig-Holstein and the estuaries of the Jade, Weser, and Elbe rivers. Originally occupied by Frisian herdsmen and fishermen, the island became a Danish possession in 1714, was formally ceded to Britain in 1814, who in 1890 transferred it to Germany in exchange for Zanzibar and other African territories. The Germans used the island as an important naval base: it was consistently used by German naval forces in World War I.
Bismarcks and Rodneys: Otto von Bismarck (1815–96) was prime minister of Prussia (1862–73 and 1873 90) and founder and first chancellor (1871–90) of the German Empire. Known for his foreign policy, Bismarck built a network of alliances and brought about strategic military advances. George Brydges Rodney (1719–92) was an English admiral who won important naval battles against France, Spain, and Holland.
viel Glück: good luck.
acharnement: bloodthirsty fury.
Gute Reise: have a pleasant journey.
glacis: a gently sloping bank.
‘Styx flowing through Tartarus’: a mythic river in Hades, the underworld, over which shades of the dead were ferried by Charon.
mauvais quart d’heure: awkward quarter of an hour.
‘The naked shingles of the world’: line 28 of Matthew Arnold’s (1822–88) poem, ‘Dover Beach’ published in 1867, although most likely written in 1851.
funk: cowering fear or panic.
North Sea Pilot: a series of publications from the I Iydrographie Office, providing sailing directions for the North Sea.
Ararat: Mount Ararat in eastern Turkey is traditionally the mountain on which Noah’s Ark came to rest after the Flood.
Emden: located in Niedersachsen, northwestern Germany, Emden is near the estuary of the River Ems and the North Sea coast of East Frisia. The port was improved and linked to the Ruhr by the Dortmund-Ems-Kanal in 1899 when it became the German seaport for Westphalia.
timeo Danaos: a treacherous gift, referring to the Trojan Horse and Virgil’s ‘Timeo Danaos ct dona ferentes’ (Aeneid, ii. 49, ‘I fear the Greeks, even when they offer gifts’).
Cowes: a port of the Isle of Wight and a centre for yacht clubs, including the Royal Yacht Squadron. The first week in August, known as Cowes Week, is one of the largest yachting festivals in Britain.
Rubicon: a small stream on the east coast of Northern Italy, which when crossed by Caesar marked the beginning of the war with Pompey; a crucial boundary line.
mutatis mutandis: with the necessary changes.
Stygian: as dark and gloomy as the infernal regions of the River Styx of classical mythology.
carpamus diem: an aphorism quoted from Horace meaning let us seize the day.
Belshazzar’s feast: Greek co-regent of Babylon at whose feast the prophet Daniel interpreted handwriting on the wall and foresaw the destruction of the city in 539 BC.
Auf Wiedersehen: goodbye.
Camper’s Sailing Tours: Frank Cowper, Sailing Tours: The yachtsman’s guide to the cruising maters of the English coasts (Upcott Gill, 1892).
Macmullen’s Down Channel: Richard Turrell McMullen (1830–91) was a pioneer of Corinthian sailing and Down Channel is a classic bible of boat handling and cruising.
amende: reparation.
schrecklich: terrible.
lant pis pour les fails: too bad for the facts.
Galahads: men having the qualities of Sir Galahad, a knight of the Round Table in Arthurian legend: nobility, integrity, courteousness, etc.
imbroglio: a confused situation.
Vier Jahreszeilen: the Four Seasons Hotel.
Homeric … Olympian circle: characteristic of Homer, the author of two Greek epic poems, in which feature the Gods of Mount Olympus.
relour offensif: renewed attack.
Kamchatka: a peninsula in Siberia.
ulster: a long, loose overcoat of rough cloth, often belted around the waist.
polders: pieces of low-lying land reclaimed from the sea or a river, and protected by dykes.
sapper: a soldier employed in working at saps: the building and repairing of fortifications.
Gaslhaus: inn, public house.
Wurst: sausage.
Frisian dialect: the Frisian language is the West Germanic language most closely related to English. Frisian was formerly spoken from what is now North Holland, along the North Sea coastal area to modern German Schleswig. The three Frisian dialects include West Frisian (spoken in Friesland), East Frisian (spoken in Saterland west of Oldenburg), and North Frisian (spoken along the west coast of Schleswig and on the islands of Sylt, Föhr, Amrum, the Halligen Islands, and Helgoland).
Postschiff: mail boat.
redoubts and masked batteries: redoubts are small fortifications made in the bastion of a permanent fortification, and batteries are the platforms on which artillery is mounted.
perdus: isolated.
crimp: an agent who procures seamen by entrapping or seducing them.
fo’c’ sle: of or pertaining to forecastle; hence, the language of sailors’ yarns.
Cutliffe Hyne and Kipling: Charles John Cutliffe Wright Hyne (1866–1944) wrote Through Arctic Lapland and Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) poet, short-story writer, and novelist, is best known for his picaresque novel of India, Kim (1901) and his children’s tales in The Jungle Book (1894). The sea is a focus in several of Kipling’s works including A Fleet in Being (1898) and Traffics and Discoveries (1904).
schnappsen: (schnapsen) boozing.
feine schnapps: fine spirits.
Treasure Island: by Robert Louis Stevenson and published in book form in 1883. The novel is a children’s adventure story featuring Jim Hawkins and is a tale of pirates and buried treasure.
eyrie: now common spelling of aerie: the nest of any bird of prey.
métier: profession.
Achlung: beware, look out.
invasion of England by Germany: at the turn of the century, relations between England and Germany were cordial and if the British government feared invasion, the enemy would have been France. By 1902, however, as a result of Germany’s support of the Boers in the South African War, Germany was recognized as a potential threat. This was intensified by the German Naval Laws of 1898 and 1900 and the Kaiser’s colonial agenda.
Emden … German press: in 1902 it was said that docks for the possible embarkation of 300,000 men were being built at Emden.
littoral: region lying along the shore.
Committee of National Defence: by 1902 public and government feared German invasion and it became a topic for discussion in the media. The Morning Post called for a naval base on the East Coast and in March 1903, British Prime Minister Arthur Balfour announced a new naval base in the Firth of Forth.