A CENTURY ago this August, the hero of the Siege of Mafeking, Major General Robert Baden-Powell, started an experimental camp for boys on Brownsea Island, sparking into life an organisation that spread across the globe.

A new 56-page book, Scout Island, has just been published that looks back at that groundbreaking camp that saw public schoolboys and lads from the Poole and Bournemouth area try out the ideas of Baden-Powell that had first germinated in a book for the Army called Aids to Scouting, eight years before.

B-P, as he became known, was as famous in 1907 as any footballer alive today, writes Steven Harris, the book's author.

The hero of the Boer War - who was to marry Olave Soames from Parkstone five years later- was familiar with Brownsea having once sailed across Poole Harbour with his brother to one of its beaches.

The owner of Brownsea, Mr Charles van Raalte, gave him permission to hold his boys' encampment on his island.

The camp started officially on August 1 with 20 boys - including public schoolboys from top schools like Charterhouse, Harrow and Eton as well as local lads from the Poole and Bournemouth Boys Brigades - divided into four patrols with one boy in charge of each group.

The boys had crossed by ferry from Sandbanks.

Their kit list, familiar to Scouts on camps many decades later, included such things as enamel plates and waterproof sheets.

In those days, camping was usually only practised by gypsies and the military and, says Steven Harris, even the wearing of shorts was quirky.

"At the Brownsea Island camp," he writes in Scout Island, which also contains 36 photos, "B-P woke the boys each morning with a few blasts on his African Koodoo horn.

"From a cavalry lance stuck into the ground outside his tent flew the union flag that had flown outside B-P's headquarters at Mafeking.

"Before breakfast proper at 8am, the boys would wash; they were then given cocoa to drink and a biscuit.

"This would tide them over whilst they embarked on half an hour's physical exercises."

The four patrols were the Bulls, Wolves, Ravens and Curlews and they were taught everything from tracking to knotting and fire-lighting to woodcraft, with B-P regaling them with stories in the evening.

"The boys were put on their honour to behave well, care for each other and not let the patrol down... and they didn't," states Mr Harris.

How did the boys get on?

Mr Harris quotes historian Tim Jeal saying, "the public schoolboys struck the Brigade boys as prissily over-polite, while the Brigade boys sometimes surprised the others by feats such as eating raw cockles."

The camp, including such games as a tug-of-war and a whale hunt' - going out in boats to harpoon a wooden whale - lasted eight days, culminating in a farewell display at the castle for invited guests.

Afterwards the boys, including Arthur Broomfield, who was not one of the 20 but an island boy who followed all that was happening before being invited to take part in some of the events, recalled their experiences.

Arthur recalled the moment he first met with Baden-Powell: "You can imagine the thrill I felt when I met my hero face to face," he said.

The experimental camp had made a financial loss - the public school boys had each paid £1 and the local lads 3/6 (18p) to take part, but the deficit came to more than £24 - a sizable sum in those days.

Nevertheless it was clearly a success as, within a year, B-P published his handbook, Scouting For Boys, which probably sold more copies than any other book in the 20th century other than the Bible, according to Steven Harris, who lives in South East London.

Troops sprang up all over Britain in the following years and Girl Guides was started in 1910.

Today, as Scouts worldwide commemorate the anniversary of the Brownsea camp, former Scouts can be found at the top of every profession.

They include, for example, footballer Michael Owen, singers like George Michael and Sir Cliff Richard, comedians like Matt Lucas and Harry Hill and politicians like Tony Benn and Sir John Major.

"Of the 12 Apollo astronauts, 11 were former Boy Scouts," writes Mr Harris, who is currently finishing a biography of B-P.

"In 1969 Neil Armstrong, a former Eagle Scout, was the first man to set foot on the moon.

"He left behind scientific equipment for experiments... and a Scout badge."

That's how far the movement that germinated at Brownsea 100 years ago has spread!

  • Scout Island by Steven Harris, Lewarne Publishing, £6, ISBN 978 0 9513168 5 6.