Based on the experience with Sly Bob, the British attempted to portray an aging cruiser as a battleship that would pose a threat to German shipping. When the effort proved unsuccessful because the dummy equipment and fixtures added to the cruiser were unrealistic, Maskalyne's team used the partially-dummied cruiser as "sucker bait". With sucker bait, a magician uses an audience's powers of observation against it by allowing members to falsely believe they see through a trick. By appearing to attempt to camouflage the cruiser-turned-dummy battleship, which Maskalyne christened HMS "Houdin" after magician Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin, but allowing German observers to see through the camouflage, Maskalyne's team enabled the Germans to conclude on their own that the British were attempting to hide a battleship. Allowing the Germans to believe they had penetrated the camouflage and detected the battleship created in the minds of German military leadership the same risk to German shipping a real battleship would have posed.