The Strangest Warship Battle of WW1 - Africa's Lake Tanganyika

The WW1 battle for control over Central Africa and access to the region’s vast natural resources pitted Germany’s Kaiserliche Marine against Britain’s Royal Navy in one of the war’s most unusual strategic locations. Situated between what was then the Belgian Congo and German East Africa, Lake Tanganyika is the second-largest freshwater lake in the world by volume. It had been dominated by German forces since the start of the conflict thanks to the deployment of two small warships. German naval control of the lake had effectively prevented any British offensives into German East Africa, and a new development threatened to put Allied territory at risk.

In April of 1915, John R. Lee, a British big-game hunter in Africa, observed Germany working a new vessel that would make the Germans nearly invincible on Tanganyika. The Graf von Goetzen was a converted and armed passenger ferry that was over 30-times the size of the warships Germany already had patrolling the area. Capable of carrying nearly 1,000 troops, the vessel could transport German Army units to any point on the lake, cutting transit time to hours versus the weeks it would take Allied forces to maneuver on land.

Together with Admiral Sir Henry Jackson, Lee came up with a bold idea to send two British steamboats on a treacherous journey to Africa to counter the threat. Sailed from Britain, packed on rail cars, dragged by oxen, and floated down a river, the makeshift warships would fulfill, as Admiral Jackson put it, [QUOTE] “the duty and the tradition of the Royal Navy to engage the enemy wherever there is water to float a ship...”