The Dreadnought Hoax portrait as an affront to the Edwardian age

In February of 1910, an early incarnation of the now notorious Bloomsbury group of London intellectuals hoodwinked the British Admiralty and the crew of the Dreadnought battleship into thinking they were an Abyssinian royal delegation. Their minstrel-esque disguises afforded them an official reception on the ship and caused heated controversy when, days later, the troupe was exposed as imposters. This article examines the prank from the point of view of its photographic record. It argues that the group portrait of the party is key to excavating the audacity of the hoaxers, uncovering the genealogy of their costuming and understanding the problematic nature of racial knowledge in Edwardian England. These conclusions cannot be drawn, nor the photograph’s value measured, by examining the image in isolation. Understanding the photograph’s sensation as a tool for documenting the hoax, identifying the imposters and exposing the female member of the party requires a ‘sight’ that extended beyond the static frame to the complex and evolving visual culture of the time.