INTRODUCTION

 

ar has been with us since the first settlements established themselves in the Fertile Crescent. Thanks to the technological advancements of the early and mid-Twentieth Century we have all heard, read and seen films of defeats, victories and adventures of the Second World War.

However, for one year during WWI, between the months of June 1915 and July 1916, there occurred an adventure, well documented but scarcely written about, which culminated in a marine battle on a lake led by a naval officer who was in reality a desk clerk who had spent little time on the water and who led a small group of sailors assisted by hundreds of black Africans who had never seen a white man, against a far superior enemy all after travelling 10,000 miles to fight this enemy.

While carrying their gun boats with them.

As one would do.

By mid-1915 an array of countries from across Europe were seeking to establish a foothold on the 'Dark Continent' for commercial purposes. All were thrown into chaos when, following the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo, war broke out.

Fluent in French, German and English Lt. Geoffrey Spicer-Simson, relegated to desk duty as punishment, was chosen to lead a critical mission which prompted one man to comment;

 

"No single achievement during World War I was distinguished by more bizarre features than the successfully executed undertaking of 28 daring men who transported a ready-made navy 10,000 miles through the wilds of Africa to destroy an enemy flotilla on Lake Tanganyika."

 

  - Unknown contemporary writer c.1919

 

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From the diary of Master Seaman Jim Davies, H.M.S. Ark Royal

10 November 1980, Sheffield, England

 

“There are those who believe a man’s fate is in the hands of the Gods. My father, God rest his soul, always believed a man should take control of his fate no matter the odds against him. 

Such was my mentality, confused as it was, the day my mother with tears in her eyes, handed me over into the care of the Royal Navy at the yards in Portsmouth.

Having received promotion from a Landsman after my first year I have now been advanced to Ordinary Seaman in service under His Majesty King George V.

It was back during this service, in the year of 1914 that I would meet a man who would prove my father’s beliefs correct.

I had heard some refer to him as unbalanced, emotionally unstable and a poor tactician. Others added ungentlemanly, not officer material at all.

It would be against the Commandments if I were to say he weren’t at least a little left of centre, behaviour-wise that is, but I’ve yet to hear tell of a man who accomplished what he did to overcome the impossible odds and insurmountable obstacles placed in his path to take control of his fate and those who followed him.

 

 

CHAPTER I

 

Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina

June 28, 1914 10:15

 

avrilo Princip paused on the narrow, winding road to gaze down and out across the compact city. Little had changed in the last hundred years.

It looked as if some long dead giant had trod across the land sowing seeds over the rolling acreage in random patterns which, over the years had taken root. Only the seeds hadn’t blossomed into trees or bushes, but an array of white washed buildings of varied shapes and sizes interrupted only by the occasional black-capped minaret projecting skywards here and there.

It was a warm, clear sunny Sunday morning when throngs of supporters had turned out to cheer, some to jeer, the approaching motorcade.

Finely dressed women gossiped nervously, children poked through the crowd to get a better view and police were randomly scattered along the route to manage crowd control.

Young Gavrilo nervously fidgeted as he paced back and forth near the bridge just behind the crowd lining the quay.

The terrorist organizers had planned well. No surprise given they had months to hatch their plot. All angles had been considered.

Or so they thought.

With six would-be-assassins all organized by a Bosnian Serb, a member of the dreaded secret society known as the Black Hand, lining the parade route each was equipped with a pistol, ammunition and the latest in homemade combat technology; an improvised bomb.

Nineteen year old Princip who felt he was fully committed, tentatively reassured himself that he was doing the right thing, and continued pacing.

To help calm himself his inner dialogue uttered those indomitable words undoubtedly uttered by many assassins before or since;

 

This operation has to succeed. The future of my people depends upon it!

 

The third of nine offspring, six of whom died as young children, his political indoctrination had begun less than three years ago when joining the Young Bosnia, a radical separatist organization advocating cessation of ties with Austria and the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

That day it was Arch Duke Ferdinand's wife Sophie's bad luck that her husband was in Sarajevo to inspect the Bosnian troops. Being the product of a morganatic or left-handed marriage, poor Sophie was forbidden to sit beside her husband during official ceremonies, official procedures and all state business functions. However, she was allowed to accompany her husband during military inspections and so that morning she sat beside him in the open-topped motor car.

As the motorcade slowly progressed along the quay a youth sprang from the crowd. The first bomb was thrown.

It bounced off the retracted cloth roof on back of the vehicle and exploded on the road.

At the sound of the second explosion which had also missed and exploded under the royal car wounding several of its occupants, Princip fondled the FN model 1910 pistol in his pocket more nervously. He took refuge in the doorway of Schiller's Delicatessen across from the bridge.

As the motorcade, now at speed, passed his position there was no time to mount the attack.

He also had failed.

But the war gods were against the royals that day as in their haste someone gave the driver the wrong directions and the Archduke's car was forced into reverse, doubling back along the route. Princip Gavrilo was given a reprieve and he took full advantage of it.

All doubt was cast aside as he jogged to the right side of the car and fired two shots in quick succession. One hit Ferdinand in the neck the second his wife in the stomach causing her to pass out immediately slumping into her husband's lap. Chaos ensued as Sophie died on the way to the governor's residence. Ferdinand followed ten minutes later. The rest is history.

A history of an estimated 41 million casualties and a lopsided treaty that would set the stage for a second 'War to End All Wars' a short twenty-five years later.

With a long history of assassinations the Browning designed FN 9mm would be used to assassinate Paul Doumer President of France by the Russian Paul Gorguloff in 1932, Carl Weiss to kill Huey Long the Governor of Louisiana in 1935 and by Hannie Schaft the Dutch resistance fighter who killed several Nazis during the war that was inadvertently spawned by the WWI peace treaty.

However, save perhaps for some Eskimos in Eastern Siberia, the shot fired that day by a misguided nineteen year old would affect literally every soul on earth.

 

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CHAPTER II

 

y July 1914 Europe was a busy little continent in the months following Princip's politically motivated stunt.

The Balkans were the first to explode followed by the Austro-Hungarian states that were followed by Germany, Japan and Russia. Later a total of over two dozen countries would join in the fray.

In the meanwhile the four weeks between July 28^th and August 25^th were even more hectic.

On July 28^th Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, who reciprocated in kind. On the 1^st of August Germany declared war on Russia. Nine days later Austria declared war on Russia. In between, on the 4^th, Britain threw her hat into the ring and declared war on Germany a day after Germany declared war on France.

Following rounds of fruitless negotiations Japan, feeling her oats after defeating the Russians a few years earlier, declared war on Germany on the 23^rd of August. Two days later Austria declared war on Japan.

All the while the U.S. stood back and shook its head mumbling "Tsk tsk! You silly Europeans!"

The four primary European nations with colonial interests on the African continent in August of 1914 were France, Belgium, Germany and Great Britain.

In early August a string of parliamentary meetings in London yielded the strategy to seize all Imperial German overseas assets and block all ports that may aide Das Vaterland in their war efforts.

The African areas most invested in over the last two decades were the territories of the Great Lakes region housing Lake Victoria, Lake Nyasa and Lake Tanganyika.

At over 400 miles or 673 km long, the second longest and second deepest fresh water lake in the world, after Lake Baikal in Siberia, holding 19,000 cubic kilometers of water, Lake Tanganyika is also the second oldest lake in the world. More importantly in 1914 it was the only body of land or water which bordered three of the colonial power's territories.

At the outbreak of the war German East Africa was essentially encircled by her enemies as all her surrounding colonies were occupied by the Belgians or British. 

However, the lake bordered all the belligerent territories on at least one side dictating control of the lake vital to both the Central and Allied or Entente powers.

At the time the British, Belgians and Germans had vessels on the expansive lake whose ragged shore line provided bays and lagoons where vessels could take shelter as well as hide when necessary.

Now with the 45 tonne Kingani, the 60 tonne Hedwig von Wiessmann and the massive 1,575 tonne von Götzen boasting quadruple armament soon to be launched, it was believed that the issue of the lake had been settled for the remainder of the war. The Kaiser’s navy was and would remain in control.

The Belgians had the 90 tonne Del Commune backed by the British Good News and the Cecil Rhodes, all smaller and all sharing the meagre Belgian, hand dug harbour on the western shore. This left the Kaiser's flotilla not only the dominant naval force on Tanganyika but essentially the only fleet, however small, able to transport significant numbers of troops quickly to any area surrounding the lake there-by affording them strategic advantage.

Meanwhile the Belgians, having not given up, maintained their presence but also had requested four sea planes, two more boats, torpedoes and a submarine.

They got no submarine, no boats and no torpedoes. But a shipment did come a month or so later.

They got one plane. To be due on station in mid-1916, a year and a half in future.

Such was the overall military situation on Lake Tanganyika in late 1914.