Virginia

What Virginia Woolf’s “Dreadnought Hoax” Tells Us About Ourselves

Published

2 years ago

January 25, 2024

What Virginia Woolf’s “Dreadnought Hoax” Tells Us About Ourselves

I first read Virginia Woolf’s novels in the early 1980s as a visiting undergraduate at the University of Sussex, its campus nestled in the South Downs just seven miles from Monks House, Woolf’s country home in Rodmell village. Since then, I have been fascinated by her pacifism, and by the veterans, shell-shocked soldiers, and war dead who haunt her books.

In Mrs. Dalloway (1925), I am drawn not to the tinselly Clarissa, but to the brain-fissured Septimus Warren Smith. Each time I read To the Lighthouse (1927) I am once again shocked by World War I encapsulated in square brackets. In Jacob’s Room (1922), it is the dismay of a mother cradling an empty pair of her dead son’s shoes that chokes me up. Writing about the Dreadnought hoax seemed the natural extension of my long admiration for Woolf, the pacifist.

The Dreadnought hoax took place on a cloudy afternoon in early February 1910. Woolf—then the unmarried 28-year-old aspiring novelist Virginia Stephen—joined her brother and friends in a practical joke on the British Navy. Putting on blackface makeup and theatrical costumes, they went aboard the nation’s most famous battleship, the H.M.S. Dreadnought, posing as African princes.

Incredibly, they got away with it. When the story of the stunt was leaked to the press, it made headlines around the world for weeks, embarrassed the Royal Navy, and even provoked heated discussions in parliament. Exactly what the hoax meant has been debated ever since.

When I first read about the Dreadnought prank in the waning decades of the twentieth century, it was celebrated as Woolf’s cheeky act of defiance targeting militarism, empire, and patriarchy, a perfect skewering of war mongers and their war machines. It seems impossible to believe now, but there was little concern that the young Virginia Woolf boarded the formidable warship wearing blackface make-up as she masqueraded as an African prince, an act of unthinkable offensiveness. The past, they say, is a foreign country. What they don’t tell you is how even your own past can feel like a bewildering, inexplicable land.

We don’t seem to know how to deal with the lives and the works of writers who are at once revolutionary and deeply flawed.

After the racial reckoning of the last twenty years, it is impossible to look at the hoax as merely an audacious pacifist prank. No serious writer can ignore the racist attitudes at its core.

Once I realized that I needed to see Woolf’s life afresh, to reimagine it in the context of Black British history, my view opened to a host of extraordinary individuals invisible to traditional approaches. I found that Woolf’s Bloomsbury neighborhood was home to many Black people, some of whom would go on to play crucial roles in the dismantling of empire. I discovered that her personal history was intimately connected to a nineteenth-century Ethiopian prince ripped from his homeland by a British general and brought to England to live out what would be a short, unhappy life.

I also realized that her blackface masquerade linked her to the exploits of a Jamaican swindler who impersonated African royalty and became something of a folk hero. As I spent time exploring the rich world of Jamaicans living in early twentieth-century London, I also understood that the redoubtable Caribbean writer Una Marson’s play London Calling was, in fact, a rewriting of the Dreadnought stunt as an anti-imperialist, anti-racist comedy. As I researched, I saw that telling the story of the hoax was inseparable from talking about the lives of Black people in Britain.

As I worked, I found a wealth of materials describing the prank, including naval memoranda, newspaper stories, interviews, photographs, telegrams, letters, and memoirs. There were innumerable retellings in newspapers, popular magazines, Wikipedia, YouTube, Facebook, and all manner of blogs and podcasts. The practical joke even played a bit part in an episode of the hit television show Downton Abbey. It seemed as if nothing could be easier than to describe what had taken place.

And yet, once I started digging into the historical documents, I discovered that nearly every account I had read about the hoax was wrong including, amazingly enough, Woolf’s own. Since 1910, writers—even those who were there—have misconstrued the most basic facts: the day it occurred, who was being impersonated, even the top-secret status of the Dreadnought.

There were times writing this book when no one could have been more afraid of Virginia Woolf than I was. As I reread her diaries, I delighted in her wit and thrilled at her brilliant insights even as I winced at her easy racist remarks, her cruel caricatures of her friends, and her sense of superiority over the people who had been so shortsighted as to be born into a lower class. Rereading her novels, some dazzled me all over again. Others put me to sleep.

Returning to her biography, I pitied her for the bereavements that darkened her youth, cringed as she covered her face with burnt cork, admired her work ethic in the face of recurring mental illness, envied her easy entrée into the literary world, and mourned her early death by her own hand. I thought about our desire as readers to place our literary heroes on pedestals because their books have moved us with their beauty and wisdom. We don’t seem to know how to deal with the lives and the works of writers who are at once revolutionary and deeply flawed.

Some people may argue that they should be discarded altogether. But if we do that, we lose the lessons that past lives offer. Could looking closely at the Dreadnought hoax, I wondered, and the stories we have been spinning about it for over a hundred years, tell us not only about this iconic writer and her world, but also about ourselves?

If Virginia Woolf had not put a stone in her coat pocket and walked into the Ouse on 28 March 1941 when she was 59 years old, it is possible she might have altered her bigoted ideas about race. In one of her last book reviews, she observed that even people of “genius and learning” have difficulty swimming against the current of their times. And while their genius and learning may “come downstream untouched,” as she put it, it soon becomes obvious that the social conventions which dictated their lives are “obsolete and ridiculous.”

Just as Woolf predicted, her talent, intelligence, and sensitivity have sailed downstream to us intact, and the racist conventions that bound and blinded her look obsolete, hateful, and absurd. Had she lived into her sixties, seventies, or eighties, would she have seen their absurdity, too? We will never know, of course. Death has made her unchangeable.

Yet Virginia Woolf’s writing can still be alive to us, revealing as it so often does that lives are a messy, confusing miasma of emotion and reason swirling around together and apart, blinding us, holding us back, or thrusting us forward toward our blunders and our triumphs.

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Adapted from The Girl Prince: Virginia Woolf, Race, and the Dreadnought Hoax by Danell Jones and published by C. Hurst & Co. (Publishers) Ltd. in the UK and Oxford University Press in the US © Olga Onuch and Henry E. Hale 2023. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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Feds want graduate nursing programs to reduce costs. This Virginia nurse worries changes will increase debt.

Published

4 hours ago

December 11, 2025

Press Room

Feds want graduate nursing programs to reduce costs. This Virginia nurse worries changes will increase debt.

RICHMOND, Va. — University of Virginia graduate nursing student Nelly Sekyere worries that proposed federal loan cuts could prevent future students like herself from pursuing advanced nursing degrees that are helpful in filling shortages in underserved communities.

Sekyere’s parents moved to the United States from Ghana to pursue the American Dream. They worked hourly wage jobs to support their two kids and ultimately became licensed practical nurses, but they never had much money.

Nelly Sekyere

“My dad’s credit score was to the point where it was just awful. He had to file for bankruptcy. He was in so much debt,” Sekyere said.

Still, their children had big dreams and understood the value of hard work. Sekyere, who currently works as a nurse for a local health department, is now a student at UVA pursuing her doctorate to become a family nurse practitioner and to teach others who want to be nurses.

“I do plan to work in underserved communities and rural regions because that is something I am used to, and I feel that is where my expertise are needed the most,” Sekyere said.

She is able to pursue the doctorate because she qualifies for $200,000 in federal graduate degree loans. She said that without the loans, she couldn’t afford the degree.

“I would not. I physically could not afford it,” Sekyere said.

But future nursing graduate students like her may not be able to access as much federal loan money under graduate loan program changes within the One Big Beautiful Bill. Those changes would mean students enrolling in post-baccalaureate nursing programs would be eligible for half the amount of money in federal graduate loans they are currently allowed to take out.

Currently, they can take out $200,000 in federal graduate loans. That number would drop to $100,000 if the changes take effect.

“This impacts those that are pursuing a master’s in nursing, a doctorate of nursing practice or a PhD in nursing,” said Cindy Rubenstein, Director of Nursing and a professor at Randolph Macon College. “Those graduate programs actually prepare nurses to be advanced practice nurses whether that is a Nurse Practioner in primary care, midwives specialists, and also as educators and nurse scientists.”

On its website, the U.S. Department of Education states “95% of nursing students borrow below the annual loan limit and are therefore not affected by the new caps. Further, placing a cap on loans will push the remaining graduate nursing programs to reduce costs, ensuring that nurses will not be saddled with unmanageable student loan debt.”

Rubenstein said she understands the administration’s desire to control tuition costs and limit borrowing amounts. But she says the reality is that the proposal does not take into account the cost of key professional programs that we have shortages in.

“Health care training at the graduate level is more expensive than other training programs and other graduate degrees and that is because of the requirements for clinical practice,” Rubenstein said.

Both Rubenstein and Sekyere worry that reducing the amount of federal loan money a person can take out to pursue those higher nursing degrees will stop people from entering the programs because they either don’t qualify for a private loan or the interest rate is too high.

“I likely foresee in the future that graduate students are going to get themselves into private loan debt and with these programs there is no student loan forgiveness, there is no leniency, there is no income driven plans for you to be able to pay that back,” Sekyere said.

The federal loan changes are slated to take effect July 1 of next year. The Education Department is still working to define exactly which professional programs will no longer be eligible for the higher loan amounts and may make changes based on public comments.

CBS 6 asked Congressman Rob Wittman (R-1st District), who voted for the One Big Beautiful Bill, about the changes to the graduate nursing loans, and he sent us the following statement:

“Our healthcare professionals, especially our nurses, work tirelessly to serve our communities and ensuring pathways to training and education is essential. This proposed rule from the Department of Education has not yet been finalized, and there will be another opportunity for public comment. I will continue to monitor this situation as it develops and I remain committed to addressing the affordability of higher education.”

CBS 6 is committed to sharing community voices on this important topic. Email your thoughts to the CBS 6 Newsroom.

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Veteran environmental legislator David Bulova selected as Virginia’s next resources secretary

Published

16 hours ago

December 11, 2025

Press Room

Veteran environmental legislator David Bulova selected as Virginia’s next resources secretary

Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger moved Thursday to elevate one of the General Assembly’s most seasoned environmental lawmakers, selecting Del. David Bulova, D-Fairfax, to lead Virginia’s natural and historic resources portfolio when she takes office next month.Spanberger said Bulova’s decades in environmental planning and his legislative work on water quality, Chesapeake Bay cleanup and conservation policy make him well suited to steer the administration’s efforts on climate resilience, preservation and land stewardship. In announcing the choice, she framed the appointment as central to her agenda.

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Virginia Lottery urges adults to ‘Scratch the Idea’ of gifting lottery tickets to minors

Published

1 day ago

December 10, 2025

Press Room

Virginia Lottery urges adults to ‘Scratch the Idea’ of gifting lottery tickets to minors

RICHMOND, Va. (WWBT) – The Virginia Lottery and the Virginia Council on Problem Gambling are urging adults to gift responsibly this holiday season, warning that giving lottery tickets to anyone under 18 can normalize gambling and increase the risk of addiction.

The Virginia Lottery and the council have partnered for years to raise awareness about the risks of youth gambling and are encouraging adults to choose age-appropriate gifts this holiday season.

The groups released a public service announcement this week called “Scratchers for Kids?—Scratch That Idea” as part of a seasonal campaign on social media and other outlets.

The PSA’s message is direct: Don’t give children scratch-off tickets or other lottery products as gifts.

“Just as you wouldn’t give a child alcohol at Christmas, don’t give them a lottery ticket,” said Dr. Carolyn Hawley, president of the Virginia Council on Problem Gambling.

Officials said well-meaning adults sometimes slip lottery tickets into stockings or hand them out as small gifts, but this practice is dangerous and inappropriate.

They warned it may raise the likelihood that a child will develop gambling problems later in life.

“We want to discourage participating in gambling for as long as possible. We want to keep it safe, we want to keep it fun and to do so, let’s delay early onset for children,” Hawley said.

Hawley said the younger someone starts gambling — whether with a scratch-off ticket or on sports-betting websites — the greater the chances of developing a problem.

She and other officials noted a recent uptick in younger people seeking help and calling hotlines for gambling-related issues.

“We know they didn’t start gambling between 18 to 24; they started much earlier,” Hawley said.

Officials also noted that giving lottery tickets to minors is illegal.

They said their hope is that parents and guardians will set positive examples and model healthy behavior.

“They’re watching and they’re seeing, even if you’re not aware that that’s happening. So pay attention, recognize and understand the risks that can happen and model good behavior for your children,” Hawley said.

The Virginia Lottery and the council have partnered for years to raise awareness about the risks of youth gambling and are encouraging adults to choose age-appropriate gifts this holiday season.

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