Mimi and Toutou's Big Adventure: The Bizarre Battle of Lake Tanganyika

The true story of the "Battle" of Lake Tanganyika is told with a reserved flair that makes the events seem even more odd. The Germans may have had the last word in that the Götzen still provides vital regional transport as the MS Liemba

Foden's novels - The Last King of Scotland, Ladysmith, and Zanzibar - have always been backed by a lot of research and local knowledge of Africa. This book, whose excellent research is backed by the author's personal visits to the area, is also set in Africa, and is a straight historical account of an episode in the First World War which is little known today, but disguised elements of which would figure in C.S.Forester's novel The African Queen and in the film of the same title. Lake Tanganyika - its length of 410 miles making it the longest fresh-water lake in the world - then formed the border between German East Africa to the East and Belgian Congo and Northern Rhodesia to the West and South. (There are admirable maps of the region in the book.) In 1915 the British knew that the Germans had a 67-ton warship on the Lake, but did not know that there were on it two other German warships, one of 45 tons, the other a huge 1200 tonner. The British had nothing. The Admiralty decided to put their own warships - two small motor-boats called Mimi and Toutou (French for `miaow' and `bow-wow', although the Admiralty, having rejected the commander's suggestion of `Cat' and `Dog', did not know that), of 8 tons each - on the Lake. Because Africans spying for the Germans would spot ships being built near the Lake, these boats were carried in cradles on board of a larger ship from Tilbury to Cape Town; then, still in their cradles, loaded onto the railway running north from the Cape. This railway line was not continuous to the Lake, and for part of the journey the boats had to be moved along short stretches of river, but for most of its journey through the Congo - 146 miles - they had to be dragged overland - indeed over mountains - by locomotives, teams of oxen, and gangs of African labourers who had previously blazed a trail through the terrain. They covered the 2,500 miles from the Cape to Albertville on the western shore of Lake Tanganyika in 101 days. And all along the way African tom-toms spread the news from tribe to tribe. It reached the Germans, but they did not initially give it much credence, being more interested in some Belgian ships that were being constructed near the Western shore of the Lake. The Admiralty put in charge of this operation the untruthfully boastful, vain, irascible, pompously authoritarian but hitherto ineffectual Lieutenant Commander Geoffrey Spicer-Simson, who, after a couple of courts martial, had been demoted to a desk-job in the Admiralty. The operation was after all a side-show - it was the time of Gallipoli - and the Admiralty didn't know what else to do with the man. Spicer had some odd habits: though he was a stickler for smart uniforms, in the hot weather in Africa he wore a skirt; he had a full-body tattoo; and he antagonized everybody: the men serving under him as well as the allied Belgian officers he met on the way. Some members of Spicer's crew were pretty odd also; but there were among them suf

This is a splendid romp through the obscure WWI theatre of East Africa. The protagonist is as successful in battle as he is astonishing in behavior. It's too bad they don't teach history like this in junior high school!

Eccentricity bordering on incompetence marked Geoffrey Spicer-Simson's service as a junior officer in the Royal Navy. A braggart and a liar, he had beached one ship, sank another in a collision, and witnessed the torpedoing of a gunboat under his command from a hotel where he was entertaining his wife and other women. Surviving two court martials, he was posted to an obscure position in the Admiralty's Intelligence Division where he languished without doing further harm in the days before the beginning of World War I. Fate was to smile upon him there when, for apparent lack of more reliable leaders, he was chosen to command the Naval African Expedition. Far from the killing fields of western Europe, Lake Tanganyika would seem an unlikely stage for battle but, in the late colonial period, control of central Africa, with its resources and population was important both to Germany and the Allies. Germany controlled the lake by virtue of two steamers, the "Hedwig von Wissman" and the "Kingali." London decided to contest that control by bringing ships overland from South Africa and it fell to Spicer to accomplish that feat and to subsequently sink the German ships. Despite formidable obstacles and its leader's very dubious record, the Expedition would prove successful. Foden, drawing upon a variety of published reminiscences and general accounts of the war in that region, provides an engaging account of that mission, which resulted in Spicer's elevation to god-like status among the natives who witnessed his victory. That would prove the height of his heroic accomplishment, however, for he would never be given an active command again. Given Spicer's engaging but thoroughly bizarre character, this book's title seems somewhat beside the point. Yet it subtly enhances the portrait Foden has presented. The Royal Navy had rejected Spicer's original proposal that the motor launches he was to command be named "Cat" and "Dog." Why it accepted their designation as the "HMS Mimi" and "Toutou", those being French familiar terms for "meow-meow" and "bow-wow," goes unexplained but they were quite in keeping with their commander's enimatic character. In addition, Foden's title alludes to the plot of C.S. Forester's "The African Queen" and he devotes a chapter to paralles between the historical event and the novel for which it served as an inspiration.

At the outbreak of WWI, one strategy of the allies was to isolate and control German East Africa. Germany had had the foresight to place some armed boats on Lake Tanganyika, which effectively controlled all transportation in East Africa. The very peculiar British naval officer Geoffrey Spicer-Simpson was directed to take Mimi and Toutou, two forty-foot gunboats, overland from South Africa to the lake and defeat a fleet of German steamers. Spicer-Simpson went into battle wearing a skirt, was worshipped as a god by the Holo Holo tribe, entirely alienated his subordinates, and more or less succeeded in reducing the German naval presence through a combination of effective military action and slapstick. The events that transpired were eventually transmogrified into The African Queen (first the book by C.S. Forester, then the movie), though being significantly changed in the process. Highly entertaining analysis of a mostly forgotten episode in the Great War. Foden's mix of colorful characters, hubris, pluck, and idiocy is well worth reading.