The Riddle of the Sands is a 1979 British spy thriller cinema film based upon the novel of the same name written by Erskine Childers. Set in 1901, and starring Michael York, Simon MacCorkindale and Jenny Agutter, it concerns the efforts of two British yachtsmen to avert a plot by the German Empire to launch a seaborne military invasion of the United Kingdom.
Plot
In the Autumn of 1901, Carruthers, an aristocratic junior official in the British Foreign Office, is invited on a yachting and duck-shooting holiday by an old University acquaintance called Arthur Davies. On Carruthers' arrival on Germany's northern coast to join the yacht Dulcibella, Davies explains to him that he has a hidden agenda for the trip and the invitation beyond duck-hunting. While boating around the Frisian Islands ostensibly correcting antiquated British sea charts of the coastline's shifting topography, by chance he had met a retired German sailor called Dollmann on the yacht Medusa with his wife and daughter, Clara, with whom Davies has initiated a romantic attachment. He narrates further that whilst sailing together along the coast in a gale Dollmann had, when Davies had tried to put into a particular estuary for shelter, inexplicably prevented him from entering by executing a deliberately hazardous sea-manoeuvre, to the degree that both their lives had been endangered by it. Davies then reveals to Carruthers that his real interest in the area is that he suspects that the Imperial German Navy is engaged in covert military activity of some nature in the Frisian Islands, with the intention of threatening the security of the North Sea from the British perspective, which the Royal Navy is strategically misdirected to meet, and he is engaged in trying to discover what it is. This the pretext of the "holiday" that he has invited Carruthers upon, given Carruthers' ability to speak German along with his professional contacts within Whitehall, if they should discover something warranting the alarm being raised within the halls of the British Government.
Carruthers and Davies go on, amidst cryptic warnings-off from circling German naval officers, sailing expeditions among the Frisian isles and inlets, and fights, to carry out covert surveillance at the estuary in question, to discover that the German Empire is using a naval base hidden in the islands to carry out rehearsals for a seaborne passage across the North Sea of a German army with the aim of militarily invading Britain, and that Herr "Dollmann" is in fact Lieutenant Thomas, an embittered former Royal Navy officer who is treasonously assisting their preparations with his detailed knowledge of the British coast and key naval defences.
After sabotaging one of the rehearsals, whilst escaping to the Netherlands by sea in two roped yachts with the information about it, along with a badly wounded Dollmann and his family as prisoners, Davies abandons Dollmann with his wife in the Dulcibella to allow him to return to Germany to seek medical attention for his wounds at the insistence of Clara, who agrees to accompany Davies and Carruthers back to Britain in the Medusa with his papers revealing the German plans in detail. Dollmann and his wife are murdered by the pursuing German authorities — led by Kaiser Wilhelm II, in person — when the Dulcibella is rammed and destroyed.
The film ends with the yacht bearing Carruthers, Davies and Clara bound for the Netherlands, with a Carruthers' voiced narration detailing how their return to Britain with the information would lead to a shift in the United Kingdom's sea defence strategy towards Germany, that would avert the threat of war by tactical deterrent.
Cast
Michael York as Charles Carruthers
Simon MacCorkindale as Arthur Davies
Jenny Agutter as Clara Dollmann
Alan Badel as Dollmann
Michael Sheard as Böehme
Hans Meyer as Grimm
Wolf Kahler as Kaiser Wilhelm II
Olga Lowe as Frau Dollmann
Jurgen Andersen as Von Brüning
Ronald Markham as Withers
Production
Development and scripting
Several producers and directors had tried to make a film based on the novel but the Childers family had not wanted to sell the rights. This ceased to be a problem when the novel passed into the public domain.