In 1910 the most advanced warship on Earth was infiltrated not by spies or commandos, but by a group of Bohemian artists in stage makeup, so terrified their fake beards would melt that they could not eat or drink.

This episode unpacks the Dreadnought Hoax, a piece of analog social engineering that humiliated the British Empire at the height of its naval supremacy. We follow serial prankster Horace de Vere Cole and a young Virginia Woolf as they bluff their way aboard the Royal Navy's flagship posing as Abyssinian royalty, and examine how confidence and protocol pierced armor that guns could not.

• The 1905 Cambridge dry run that taught the group their social-engineering tactics
• How a forged telegram and an exploited VIP train got them aboard the flagship
• The gibberish Latin and Greek dialect and the cousin who faile ...