October 13, 2017 | Leave a comment Long before Muhammad Ali and George Foreman squared up to each other in a boxing ring in Kinshasa, Zaire, on October 30th 1974, in a fight that would become known as The Rumble in The Jungle, an altogether different kind of altercation took place in the jungles of East Africa during World War One; a naval battle! When the subject of the First World War is brought to mind, most people, like myself, will conjure up images of muddy trenches, or massive iron clad battleships blasting away at each other mid Atlantic. However, this particular naval engagement took place on a lake. Yes, alright, Lake Tanganyika is the second deepest lake in the world, and covers almost 33,000 square kilometres, but it is a lake, just a very big one. A Satellite Image of Lake Tanganyika Our story begins in 1915, and concerns the allied colonies of British East Africa and the Belgian Congo on the one hand, and the colony of German East Africa on the other. Of massive strategic importance to the protagonists in the war in Africa was Lake Tanganyika, bordering as it did, both the German and Belgian territories. Put simply, whoever had control of the Lake, would also have control of the land surrounding it. The trouble for the allies was that Germany was in complete control of it. Captain Gustav Zimmer had two reasonably well armed riverboats, the Hedwig von Wissmann and the Kingani, and 150 marines at his disposal. In addition, a larger gunboat called the Graf von Goetzen was under construction, and would soon be a welcome addition to the Captain’s modest fleet. Understandably, the British were more than a little keen to reverse this situation, but there was a problem. They didn’t have any boats! Furthermore, gaining access to the lake via the allied territories was extremely problematic, necessitating the navigation of swamps, jungles and mountain ranges, without either roads or railroads to expedite matters. Undeterred by these seemingly insurmountable obstacles, Mr. John Lee, an English big-game hunter, approached the British Admiralty in Whitehall, London, with an ambitious, if not harebrained, plan. He proposed the Navy dismantle two of it’s fast river gunboats and ship them to South Africa, at that time an ally of the British. Once there they could be transported by rail until the tracks ran out, after which the plan was to cut a path through the jungle, and with the help of some 2,000 natives, essentially carry the dismantled gunboats through jungle, swamp and over mountainous terrain, before eventually descending to the shores of Lake Tanganyika where they could be reassembled and launched. Most of the naval hierarchy thought Lee was unhinged, but were unable to come up with an alternative proposal, and so gave the mission the go-ahead. After all, the disappearance of two small river boats would hardly be noticed, given the huge losses being sustained in the battle for the Atlantic! The only remaining issue, was to appoint someone to lead the expedition. John Lee’s only area of expertise was shooting wild animals, and as he had no previous naval experience, he was quickly ruled out of the running. Instead, the man chosen to undertake the absurd task was Captain Geoffrey Spicer-Simson, a hitherto undistinguished naval officer, whose only previous experience in command of vessels had resulted in one collision, and a direct hit from a torpedo in broad daylight. Unsurprisingly, he had subsequently been assigned to desk duties, and so his appointment to head up the Lake Tanganyika mission, was unexpected to say the least. Presumably the thinking behind the appointment was that, as the enterprise was almost certainly doomed to fail, there was little point in committing someone valuable to it! Captain Geoffrey Spicer-Simson And so it was, that on June 15th 1915, the ‘Naval Africa Expedition’ set sail from England aboard a freighter, bound for Cape Town, South Africa. During the voyage, Spicer-Simson began displaying certain eccentricities. He ordered the ship to display the flag of a Rear Admiral, despite the fact that there was no one of that seniority on board, and he instructed his subordinates to address him as ‘mon colonel’. He claimed to have hunted lions in the Gambia, presumably unaware that lions were not native to that part of Africa, and also gave a detailed account of how he had sunk a German U-boat while in command of a destroyer, which was not true. He also named the gunboats that were being transported HMS Dog and HMS Cat, although he was quickly advised by the Admiralty that they were not suitable names for vessels of the Royal Navy. He eventually settled for Mimi and Toutou instead. By the time the expedition had reached the Belgian Congo, Spicer-Simson was becoming even more eccentric. He took to wearing a khaki skirt, and began tattooing himself. Most bizarre of all, however, was his twice weekly, naked ceremonial bath, that he insisted on taking in the middle of wherever they were camping. It was this unusual bathing ritual that led the African natives to award him the moniker of ‘Lord Loincloth’. However, despite the incredibly harsh terrain, and regardless of the odd behaviour of its leader, the party was making excellent progress, and on October 28th 1915, the unbelievable happened. After a journey of 6,000 miles by sea, and another 3,000 miles by land, they reached the Belgian Congo village of Kalemei, on the shore of Lake Tanganyika. An astonishing achievement! With gunboats reassembled, Spicer-Simson and his 26 heroic, but slightly bemused sailors, were soon ready for action. Captain Zimmer, by now aware that a British expeditionary force had arrived at the Lake, made the logical assumption that they were a purely land based force, and so dispatched his riverboat Kingani to take a few potshots at the sitting ducks. Calmly finishing a prayer meeting, Spicer-Simson sent Mimi and Toutou to meet the German vessel, which they quickly put out of action with a shot to the wheelhouse, killing the officer in charge in the process. In total the Germans suffered three fatalities and eleven sailors were taken prisoner, but of greater strategic importance, the Kingani was captured, renamed HMS Fifi, and assimilated into the now burgeoning British fleet. Meanwhile, assuming that his boat had been sunk, and surmising that it must have been hit with shore based weaponry, Zimmer next sent the Hedwig von Wissmann on a reconnaissance mission, in order to establish the strength of the British ground force. Spicer-Simson immediately ordered Mimi and Fifi into the attack, and the Wissmann was soon on her way to the bottom of the Lake. By the time the Graf von Goetzen was ready for deployment, Belgian forces were rapidly advancing towards Zimmer’s base at the port of Kigoma, and a small squadron of Royal Navy seaplanes had made their way to the lake. Now under threat from land, sea and air, Zimmer realised that the situation was hopeless, and so in July 1916 he ordered the Goetzen to be scuttled in shallow water. In a complete reversal, Lake Tanganyika, and, as a consequence, all of East Africa, was now under British control. Spicer-Simson had gone from undistinguished pen pusher to war hero, and was duly awarded the Distinguished Service Order. Following the Battle of Lake Tanganyika, the unconventional Captain simply returned to the relative obscurity of his desk job, and never saw action again. Geoffrey Spicer-Simson died on 29th January 1947 aged 71. That is not quite the end of the story though. In 1924 the Graf von Goetzen was salvaged. The Liemba, as she is now known, is a passenger and cargo ferry that still runs along the eastern shore of Lake Tanganyika. Additionally, she is believed to have been the inspiration behind C. S. Forester’s novel The African Queen, and the subsequent film of the same name starring Katherine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart. MV Liemba Sources: https://lflank.wordpress.com/2017/10/04/tanganyika-the-naval-battle-in-the-jungle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoffrey_Spicer-Simson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Tanganyika https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_Liemba