The first third in fact seems to be mainly an account of in-shore sailing, with an odd storm to spice things up but through shared experiences the two young men's friendship grows.One day, when they are confined to port due of fog, they are visited by a German barge captain who casually recounts how he saved Davies's life during a gale when the Dulcibella had run aground.Davies finally opens up about this incident to Carruthers and reveals that he got in to this perilous position whilst being guided by a more powerful yacht captained by an Englishman masquerading as a German. Davies admits that he can actually sail her alone, though finds life more pleasant with a companion.Childers initially pokes fun at Carruthers’s early days aboard the Dulcibella but gradually as his seamanship improves so the reader is introduced to the intricacies of sailing a small vessel in tidal estuaries, amid shifting sand bars.By modern standards 'The Riddle of the Sands' develops very slowly. What he discovers is a cramped thirty-foot flat-bottomed boat, the Dulcibella. Carruthers has done some sailing previously and arrives expecting a pleasure cruise on a crewed yacht and so has naturally brought along proper yachting clothes.

He is unsure where to go for his own holiday when he unexpectedly receives a letter from a former university acquaintance, Davies, who invites him to go sailing around the Baltic. He’s been stuck all summer in London whilst his friends have gone off to the country on their holidays and is feeling somewhat left out.

It opens during the first week of September, presumably a year or two before 1903, with Carruthers working for the Foreign Office. 'Germany's a thundering great nation.I wonder if we shall ever fight her.'Erskine Childers’s novel was first published in 1903 and was set against the Anglo-German Great Naval Race, it has been widely regarded as the first modern spy story.

Author of riddle of the sands