The 1914-18 war in East Africa is largely remembered today through the Hollywood camera lens. In John Huston’s 1953 film The African Queen, Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn; a Canadian river-boat captain and an English missionary; contrive to sink the Queen Louisa, a large German steamer which dominates Lake Tanganyika by virtue of having the most powerful gun. As with many Hollywood films claiming to be ‘based on a true story’, The African Queen is actually based on a fictional one; a novel published by C.S. Forester in 1935. Graf von Gotzen, the ship Queen Louisa is purported to represent (Konigin Luise in the novel), was not in fact sunk by Anglo-Canadian daring-do but scuttled with German practicality. The menacing 4.1-inch gun carried on this ship did not belong to a queen but rather a king; the SMS Konigsberg, a light cruiser that reigned briefly over East African coast before it was deposed by an enterprising joint naval and air attack by British forces. In many ways, the story of this ‘African King’ is even more interesting than that of Hollywood’s fictitious Queen.
The SMS Konigsberg was name-ship in a class of four light cruisers built for the Imperial German Navy (IGN) between 1905 and 1907. These ships were similar in design and appearance to the seven ships of the preceding Bremen Class and a succeeding pair belonging to the Dresden Class. All of these ships measured between 110 and 120 metres in length and displaced approximately 3,300 tons. They had a nautical endurance of 6000-7000 kilometres and a maximum speed of around 24 knots. Each carried an armament of ten 4.1in guns distributed in pairs evenly along the ship’s length. In the case of the Konigsberg Class, six of these guns were mounted behind shields on the main deck, four in barbettes below the main deck. The Konigsbergs were similar in size, speed and armament to British ‘Scout Cruisers’ such as the Boadicea Class. However, they were significantly inferior in these areas to the Town Class light cruisers, which came into service with the Royal Navy from 1910 onwards, and had the similar design purpose of protecting colonial possessions. German light-cruisers such as the Konigsberg were well-suited to commerce raiding, providing they could avoid encountering these faster, heavier-armed British warships, most of which carried six-inch guns.
The Konigsberg was well-known to the Royal Navy having been a diplomatic visitor to Britain twice in the early part of her career. In June 1914, the Konigsberg was sent to replace a smaller outdated cruiser on station at Dar es Salaam, then capital of German East Africa. The British and German governments had divided up the region between themselves in the 1890; Britain assuming control of modern-day Kenya and the island of Zanzibar in exchange for German possession of Tanganyika; the mainland of what is today Tanzania. The Konigsberg evidently made a favourable impression on the local populace, who referred to the ship as ‘manowasi na bomba tatu’, or ‘man of war with three pipes’ [1]; a number of funnels superior to any other vessel previously seen in the colony.
The Konigsberg was one of several German light cruisers serving German colonial outposts at the beginning of World War One, from where they would prove a considerable danger to British trade. The most successful of these raiders was SMS Emden, which before being destroyed in November 1914, had sunk or captured dozens of merchantmen and allied warships in the eastern Indian Ocean and attacked British bases in Madras and Penang. Such was her fame in Germany, the ship itself was awarded the Iron Cross. The larger and more modern SMS Karlsruhe also had a fruitful raiding career, destroying or capturing 16 ships in the Caribbean before being sunk by an internal explosion in November 1914, a fact the Royal Navy did not become aware of until the following spring. SMS Nurnberg, another ship of the Konigsberg Class, was part of the German East Asian Squadron that had defeated a British squadron at the Battle of Coronel that same month. She was sunk a month later at the Battle of the Falkland Islands.
Konigsberg’s own career as a commerce raider was short-lived. She was, however, responsible for the first British merchant casualty of the Great War, when she captured the City of Winchester in the Gulf of Aden on 6th August, just two days after the British declaration of war. The merchant vessel, said to be carrying the season’s first crop of Ceylon tea, was despatched with a prize crew to Oman, where it was scuttled. Unfortunately for the Germans, this capture was witnessed by a neutral Japanese steamer, which passed on the information to British authorities, who immediately restricted merchant sailings in the area.
After refuelling from her supply ship, the Somali, the Konigsberg headed south towards Madagascar in search of French targets. However, this also proved fruitless, and with coal supplies running low, both ships headed home. However, the Royal Navy had also been quick off the mark in the region. On 8th August, HMS Astraea of the Royal Navy’s Cape of Good Hope Station had bombarded Dar es Salaam, forcing German troops there to scuttle its floating dock across the harbour entrance. Thus obstructed from entering this port, the German cruiser and her collier were forced to seek shelter in a remote waterway some 200km south of the capital called the Rufiji Delta. Fortunately, this had recently been mapped by the German survey ship Mowe and had been found to be partly navigable. From there, both ships awaited further supplies of coal.
Fuel was a constant concern for the IGN, as it was for all blue water navies. Over the course of a century of naval dominance, the British had established a vast network of coaling stations located among its numerous colonial possessions. Moreover, they possessed the world’s largest merchant marine. The Germans in contrast had arrived late to the colonial game and had only a limited number of overseas territories spread far and wide. Steam ships of the era needed massive amounts of coal. The Konigsberg had a storage capacity of 820 tonnes and a theoretical endurance of 5750 nautical miles. However, there were a number of mitigating factors to consider. Firstly, the cruiser’s endurance fell rapidly when steaming above the optimal speed of 12knots. Secondly, coal steadily loses its calorific value if stored in the open in warmer climates. [2] Thus, coal stored for any length of time in a place like Dar es Salaam would have been markedly less efficient. Although the Konigsberg had its own supply ship, the Somali, this vessel also had to burn significant quantities of coal in order to stay in touch with the warship. Then, there was the logistical headache of transferring coal from one ship to another, which had to be undertaken while stationary in a sheltered location. Coaling was a ‘backbreaking, dirty and dangerous’ operation that required most of a ship’s crew. Coaling rates varied, but even in perfect conditions, rates in the British Grand Fleet at Scapa Flow were at best 200-300 tonnes per hour [2]. Coaling the Konigsberg in an East African bay with limited manpower and little or no shore support is likely to have taken up half a day. In rough weather, it would not take place at all. With limited coaling stations available and fleeting opportunities to resupply from attendant steamers, German surface raiders often had to resort to pilfering the coal bunkers of the merchantmen they captured. Fortunately, although the Konigsberg had been deprived of her primary port, there was still a small local supply of coal there that could be transported south to the Rufiji Delta by lighters.
After her unsuccessful venture into the Indian Ocean, the Konigsberg’s commander, Kapitan Max Looff, had determined on a commerce-raiding return voyage to Germany, hoping to obtain sufficient fuel from captured vessels along the way. However, these plans were put on hold at the last minute when Looff heard of the presence of a British warship in port at Zanzibar, which lies less than 20 miles from mainland Tanganyika. This ship was another unit of the Cape Station. With British naval resources already stretched by the need to contain the German dreadnought threat in the North Sea and bring to battle its marauding East Asian Squadron, Admiral Herbert King-Hall, the Cape’s naval Commander-in-Chief, had only three obsolete, Victorian-era, protected cruisers at his disposal: HMS Astraea, Hyacinth and Pegasus. All of these ships were inferior in almost every respect to the Konigsberg.
The latter vessel, then in port at Zanzibar, belonged to the unfortunate Pelorus Class, constructed in the last years of the 19th century. This class had been subjected to the fitting of a variety of experimental boilers, none of which evidently proved effective. This and other design faults led half the class to be retired from service before the War, one Royal Navy chief labelling them ‘unspeakably useless’. In the case of the Pegasus, this intrinsic engine defect would prove fateful; for it was because of a boiler problem, exacerbated by the necessity that the ship burn inferior Cape-sourced coal [3], that the Pegasus was forced to enter Zanzibar port for repairs in mid-September of 1914.
It was in this emasculated state that Pegasus was lying in the early hours of September 20th, when the Konigsberg steamed towards Zanzibar harbour, swiftly disabling the lightly-armed guard-ship Helmuth. Not entirely ignorant of the risk, the British captain had ordered his gun-crews to sleep on deck with a ready supply of ammunition. Unfortunately, the Konigsberg’s presence was not detected by the Officer of the Watch on board Pegasus until the German ship commenced firing from a range of 9,000 yards shortly after 5am. Taken by surprise, hamstrung by its anchored position in port, and outranged by the Konigsberg’s more modern artillery, it took only eight minutes for the British cruiser to be completely disarmed.
Having sustained numerous hits and with no further possibility of defending his ship, Captain Ingles reasonably ordered for the colours to be struck. This mode of indicating surrender dated back to the age of sail. However, so rare was it for a British ship to physically haul down its Union Jack that when Ingles’ action reached the ears of the Admiralty, it was officially hushed up [3]. In any case, the Konigsberg continued firing on the Pegasus for a total of 40 minutes before Looff claims to have been alerted to his adversary’s white flag. By this point, almost half the ship’s company had been killed or wounded. The Pegasus stayed afloat until the following afternoon when it sank in shallow water during attempts to tow it ashore.
Bow Creek to Anatahan 