4. Danger!
Being the Log of Captain John Sirius
Danger! is
a short story written by Conan Doyle in 1914 to alert politicians and the
British public to the dangers of unrestricted submarine warfare. If you want to
avoid spoilers, we recommend you read the story here (https://www.arthur-conan-doyle.com/index.php/Danger!).
The episode
can be heard here, http://doingsofdoyle.podbean.com/.
Synopsis
There has
been an incident in one of the colonies which has involved the deaths of two missionaries
and Great Britain and the small European state of Norland have been drawn into
war with one another. The King and Ministers of Norland have little hope of
victory. Captain John Sirius, who commands the nation’s fleet of eight
submarines, is convinced he can win the war by a form of unrestricted submarine
warfare against the merchant shipping that supplies much of Britain’s food. The
idea seems ludicrous, but as Sirius’s submarines begin their campaign in earnest
and losses mount, it begins to appear that Norland may be able to bring the
military and imperial colossus that is Britain to its knees…
Writing
and publication history
- First published in The Strand Magazine in July 1914 (and Collier’s in the USA a month later), on the eve of the First World War.
- It was accompanied in The Strand Magazine by a short article ‘What Naval Experts Think,’ which consisted of commentaries on Conan Doyle’s story from notable figures.
- It was included as the title story in Danger! And Other Stories (John Murray, 1918).
Origins
and inspirations
- General Friedrich Von Berhardi (1849-1930), author of Germany and the Next War (1912), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_von_Bernhardi
- Forerunners of the Channel Tunnel, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channel_Tunnel
- Conan Doyle’s Great Britain and the Next War (1913), https://www.arthur-conan-doyle.com/index.php?title=Great_Britain_and_the_Next_War
- The Prince Henry Tour (1911), a motor rally that took place between Britain and Germany, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prinz-Heinrich-Fahrt
- Major General Earnest Swinton (1868-1951), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Swinton
- The Agadir Crisis (1911), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agadir_Crisis
- Admiral Percy Scott (1853-1924), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percy_Scott
Conan
Doyle on British naval preparedness
- ‘The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans’ (The Strand Magazine, December 1908), https://www.arthur-conan-doyle.com/index.php/The_Adventure_of_the_Bruce-Partington_Plans
- ‘The Adventure of the Naval Treaty’ (The Strand Magazine, October-November 1893), https://www.arthur-conan-doyle.com/index.php/The_Adventure_of_the_Naval_Treaty
- ‘His Last Bow: The War Service of Sherlock Holmes’ (The Strand Magazine, September 1917), https://www.arthur-conan-doyle.com/index.php/His_Last_Bow
- The Last Galley (The London Magazine, November 1910), https://www.arthur-conan-doyle.com/index.php/The_Last_Galley
Historical
details
- Olympic-class ocean liners including the Olympic, Lusitania and Titanic, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympic-class_ocean_liner
- Unrestricted submarine warfare, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unrestricted_submarine_warfare
- Fred Jane (1865-1916), author of Jane’s Fighting Ships, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_T._Jane
- Admiral Charles Cooper Penrose-Fitzgerald (1841-1921), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Cooper_Penrose-Fitzgerald
- The “H.B.” letter (thanks to Alexis Barquin for sourcing), https://www.arthur-conan-doyle.com/index.php/German_Aliens_(H._B.)
- The response from Conan Doyle and Greenhough Smith, editor of The Strand Magazine, https://www.arthur-conan-doyle.com/index.php/Sir_Arthur_Conan_Doyle_about_Danger!
- BBC article on Danger!, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-28954510
Invasion
literature
- George Thompkins Cheney, The Battle of Dorking (Blackwood’s Magazine, 1871).
- William Le Queux, The Great War in England in 1897 (1894)
- William Le Queux, The Invasion of 1910 (1906).
- Saki (H. H. Munro), When William Came: A Story of England under the Hohenzollerns (1913).
- Erskine Childers, The Riddle of the Sands (1903).
- John Buchan, The Thirty-Nine Steps (1915).
- H. G. Wells, The War in the Air (1908) and The War of the Worlds (1897).
- P. G. Wodehouse, The Swoop! Or How Clarence Saved England (1909).
Recommended
reading
- Alexis Barquin curates The Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopaedia which has an immense wealth of information plus the original text and various illustrations, https://www.arthur-conan-doyle.com/
- For anyone wishing to research Doyle's life and work, Brian W. Pugh's A Chronology of the Life of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is nothing short of essential, https://www.amazon.co.uk/Chronology-Life-Arthur-Conan-Doyle/dp/1787053466/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=brian+pugh+chronology+conan+doyle&qid=1578475643&sr=8-1.
Next time
on the Doings of Doyle…
The Man With The Watches and The Lost Special (1898).
Acknowledgements
Image
credits: Thanks to Alexis Barquin at The Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopaedia for
permission to reproduce these images. Please support the encyclopaedia at www.arthur-conan-doyle.com.
Mark, many thanks for alerting us to this other piece of Doyle's "spiritual defense", "geistige Landesverteidigung" as we call it in German.
ReplyDeleteYou rightly point out in your references to the Prince Henry Tour which Doyle of course joined in summer 1911. I have always thought that, in response to the Sherlock Holmes pilgrimages to Switzerland that the Sherlock Holmes Society of London carried out in 1968, 1978, 1987, 1988, 1991, 2005 and 2012, Doyleans could organize a remake of this Prince Henry Tour that started in Bad Homburg, went all the way up to Edinburgh and ended in London. Being a classic car enthusiast, I would of course opt for classic cars, too!More importantly probably and in response to your latest Doings of Doyle is what I think the fact that a possible "model" for Von Bork was in fact Doyle's German fellow racer, Graf Carmer. I developed this theory in an article "Who was Von Bork?" published in the Sherlock Holmes Journal in summer 2014.
Keeping doing your doings!
Best wishes, Marcus Geisser, London
An excellent theory - I recall the article well! Best wishes, Marcus.
DeleteAnother case of a well chosen character's name by ACD - some are subtle but others are more obvious as is the case in point with this 'warning' story... When I first read this some 35 odd years ago I always thought that the Danger of the title tied in with the name Sirius! In other words any future submarine warfare posed a SERIOUS / Sirius threat to England! ACD loved a play on words...
ReplyDeleteVery good point! A bit of nominative determinism at play...
Delete