Battle For Lake Tanganyika
Shortly after arriving on Lake Tanganyika, Spicer-Simson relocated his base just south of Lukuga at Kalemie, where he had been building a port better protected from the lake's storms. Mimi and Toutou were assembled and launched just before Christmas 1915. Early in the morning of 26 December, the armed German tug Kingani was spotted offshore. Spicer-Simson took Mimi and Toutou out on the lake and captured Kingani after a brief firefight that killed her commander and four of her crew. The Kingani was rechristened the HMS Fifi and brought under Spicer-Simson's command. As a result, on 3 January 1916, he was promoted from lieutenant commander to commander; the promotion backdated to 26 December 1915, the date of the capture.
On 9 February 1916, the German lake boat Hedwig von Wissmann (sister vessel of the larger Hermann von Wissmann on Lake Nyasa) appeared off Lukuga to investigate the disappearance of the Kingani. After a thirty mile chase, Spicer-Simson's flotilla sank the Hedwig von Wissmann.
The capture of the Kingani and the sinking of the Hedwig greatly weakened German naval power on Lake Tanganyika. However, a survivor of the Kingani reported that the Götzen had recently been armed with a gun from the recently scuttled German cruiser Königsberg. The addition of a Königsberg gun gave the Götzen the ability to effectively fire on the Mimi, Toutou, and Fifi from well beyond their range. Though the Götzen couldn't be directly attacked, German supremacy on Lake Tanganyika had been broken.
For the action against the Hedwig, Spicer-Simson was awarded the Distinguished Service Order on 1 May 1916. Over the course of the expedition, three of his officers were awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, and twelve of his men were awarded the Distinguished Service Medal.
After its initial success, Spicer-Simson's command ended in controversy. He refused to send his ships to aid the British Colonial and Belgian Army force in the capture of Mpulungu in present day Zambia. After falling ill and retreating to his private quarters, he was sent to England for medical and mental recovery. He was also appointed a Commander of the Belgian Order of the Crown.
Read more about this topic: Geoffrey Spicer-Simson
Famous quotes containing the words battle and/or lake:
“Forty years after a battle it is easy for a noncombatant to reason about how it ought to have been fought. It is another thing personally and under fire to have to direct the fighting while involved in the obscuring smoke of it.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“A lake is the landscape’s most beautiful and expressive feature. It is earth’s eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature. The fluviatile trees next the shore are the slender eyelashes which fringe it, and the wooded hills and cliffs around are its overhanging brows.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)