William Horace de Vere Cole was an eccentric prankster born in Ballincollig, County Cork, Ireland. His most famous prank was the Dreadnought hoax where he and several others were given a tour of the Royal Navy ship HMS dreadnought. Cole was the son of British Army officer William Utting Cole, a major in the 3rd Dragoon Guards who died of cholera in India when his son was a child.
About Horace de Vere Cole in brief
William Horace de Vere Cole was an eccentric prankster born in Ballincollig, County Cork, Ireland. His most famous prank was the Dreadnought hoax where he and several others, pretending to be an Abyssinian prince and his entourage, were given a tour of the Royal Navy ship HMS dreadnought. Cole was the son of British Army officer William Utting Cole, a major in the 3rd Dragoon Guards who died of cholera in India when his son was a child. He was a great-nephew of the Anglo-Irish poet Aubrey deVere. Cole spent most of his later life in London, where he executed a series of bold jokes and escapades principally aimed at deflating pompous figures of authority.
On honeymoon with his first wife in Italy, on April Fools’ Day 1919, Cole dropped horse manure onto Venice’s Piazza San Marco. According to legend, Cole once hosted a party at which all the guests discovered that they had all the word ‘bottom’ in their surnames. With his hair and bristling moustache, Cole was sometimes mistaken for the prime minister Ramsay MacDonald, causing dismay for the Labour party. Cole died in London in 1934. He is buried at St Paul’s Cathedral, London.
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