To the Navy that alone has made this campaign possible, we soldiers owe
our grateful thanks. But there have been times when, in our blindness,
we have failed to realise how great the task was to blockade 400 miles
of this coast and to keep a watchful eye on Mozambique. For before the
Portuguese made common cause with us, there was a great deal of
gun-running along the southern border of German East Africa, which our
present Allies found impossible to watch. Two factors materially aided
the Germans in making the fight they have. First, there was the lucky
"coincidence" of the Dar-es-Salaam Exhibition. This exhibition, which
was to bring the whole world to German East Africa in August, 1914,
provided the military authorities with great supplies of machinery,
stores and exhibits from all the big industrial centres; and these were
swiftly adapted to the making of rifles and munitions of war. To this
must be added the most important factor of all, the _Königsberg_, lying
on the mud flats far up the Rufigi, destroyed by us, it is true, but not
before the ship's company of 700, officers and men, and most of the guns
had been transported ashore, the latter mounted on gun carriages and
dragged by weary oxen or thousands of black porters to dispute our
advance. In due course, however, these were abandoned, one by one, as we
pressed the enemy back from the Northern Railway south to the Rufigi.
Last, but by no means least, was the moral support their wireless
stations gave them. These, though unable, since the destruction of the
main stations, to transmit messages, continued for some time to receive
the news from Nauen in Germany. By the air from Germany the officers
received the Iron Cross, promotion, and the Emperor's grateful thanks.
But if you would see what work the Navy has done, you must first begin
at Lindi in the south. There you will see the _Präsident_ of the D.O.A.
line lying on her side with her propellers blown off and waiting for our
tugs to drag her to Durban for repair. And in the Rufigi lying on the
mudbanks, fourteen miles from the mouth, you will see the _Königsberg_,
once the pride of German cruisers, half sunk and completely dismantled.
The hippopotami scratch their tick-infested flanks upon her rusted
sides, crocodiles crawl across her decks, fish swim through the open
ports. In Dar-es-Salaam you will see the _König_ stranded at the harbour
mouth, the _Tabora_ lying on her side behind the ineffectual shelter of
the land; the side uppermost innocent of the Red Cross and green line
that adorned her seaward side. For she was a mysterious craft. She flew
the Red Cross and was tricked out as a hospital ship on one side, the
other painted grey. True, she had patients and a doctor on board when a
pinnace from one of our cruisers examined her, but she also had
machine-guns mounted and gun emplacements screwed to her deck, and all
the adaptations required for a commerce raider. So our admiral decided
that, after due notice, so suspicious a craft were better sunk. A few
shots flooded her compartments and she heeled over, burying the lying
Cross of Geneva beneath the waters of the harbour. Further up the creek
you will see the _Feldmarschall_ afloat and uninjured, save for the
engines that our naval party had destroyed, and ready, to our amazement,
at the capture of the town, to be towed to Durban and to carry British
freight to British ports, and maybe meet a destroying German submarine
upon the way. Further up still you will find the Governor's yacht and a
gunboat, sunk this time by the Germans; but easy to raise and to adapt
for our service. Strange that so methodical a people should have bungled
so badly the simple task of rendering a valuable ship useless for the
enemy. But they have blundered in the execution of their plans
everywhere. The attempt to obstruct the harbour mouth at Dar-es-Salaam
was typical of their naval ineptitude. Barely two hundred yards across
this bottle-neck, it should have been an easy job to block. So they sank
the floating dock in the southern portion of the channel and moored the
_König_ by bow and stern hawsers, to the shores on either side in
position for sinking. Instead of flooding her they prepared an explosive
bomb and timed it to go off at the fall of the tide. But the bomb failed
to explode, and an ebb tide setting in, broke the stern moorings and
drove her sideways on the shore. Here she lies now and the channel is
still free to all our ships to come and go. We found, at the occupation,
the record of the court-martial on the German naval officer responsible
for the failure of the plan. He seems to have pleaded, with success, the
fact that his dynamite was fifteen years old. After that no further
attempt was made, and for nearly a year before we occupied the town our
naval whalers and small cruisers sailed, the white ensign proudly
flying, into the harbour to anchor and to watch the interned shipping.
It must have been a humiliating spectacle to the Hun; but he was
helpless. Woe betide him, if he placed a mine or trained a gun upon this
ship of ours. The town would have suffered, and this they could not
risk.
Yet further up the coast, near Tanga, the _Markgraf_ lies beached in
shallow water, and the _Reubens_ a wreck in Mansa Bay.
In most of our naval operations our intelligence has been excellent, and
Fortune has been kind. It seemed to the Germans that we employed some
special witchcraft to provide the knowledge that we possessed. So they
panicked ingloriously, and sought spies everywhere, and hanged
inoffensive natives by the dozen to the mango trees. One day one of our
whalers entered Tanga harbour the very day the German mines were lifted
for the periodical overhaul. The Germans ascribed such knowledge to the
Prince of Evil. The whaler proceeded to destroy a ship lying there, and,
on its way out, fired a shell into a lighter that was lying near. In
this lighter were the mines, as the resulting explosion testified. This
completed the German belief in our possession of supernatural powers of
obtaining information.
Again at the bombardment and capture of Bagamoyo by the Fleet, it seemed
to the Hun that wherever the German commander went, to this trench or to
that observation post, our 6-inch shells would follow him. All day long
they pursued his footsteps, till he also panicked and searched the bush
for a hidden wireless. He it was who shot our gallant Marine officer, as
our men stormed the trenches, and paid the penalty for his rashness
shortly after.
The little German tug _Adjutant_, which in times of peace plied across
the bar at Chinde to bring off passengers and mails to the ships that
lay outside, has had a chequered career in this war. Slipping out from
Chinde at the outbreak of war, she made her way to Dar-es-Salaam. From
there she essayed another escapade only to fall into our hands.
Transformed into a gunboat, she harried the Germans in the Delta of the
Rufigi, until, greatly daring, one day she ran ashore on a mudbank in
the river. Captured with her crew she was taken to pieces by the Germans
and transported by rail to Ujiji on Lake Tanganyika. And there the
Belgians found her, partly reconstructed, as they entered the harbour. A
little longer delay, and the resurrected _Adjutant_ would have played
havoc with our small craft and the Belgians', which had driven the
German ships off the vast waters of this lake.