Central Africa. 1915.
A small band of British soldiers marches through the jungle
on a bizarre and secret mission.
In Europe, the first World War has become a murderous stalemate...
but the clash of kings and empires reaches far beyond Flanders -
to a pivotal naval battle for control of the Great Lakes of Africa.
In command of the British expedition is Lt.
- Commander Geoffrey Basil Spicer- Simson... an officer
whom the fates of war will label a hero, a madman, and a god.
June 1915.
Under the guidance of South African John Lee,
400 African labourers are hacking a highway
through the unbroken rain forest
- 150 miles of manual labour in the tropical heat.
Lee's bush road leads across jungles through swamps and over mountains
to the Great Lakes of Africa
- Tanganyika, Victoria, Nyasa.
Two already are in British hands
- but Tanganyika is the jewel of the German empire
- a prize that London desperately needs
to turn the tide of the African war.
420 miles in length,
It is a vital lifeline needed to arm and supply a jungle army.
Whoever controls the lake,
controls the surrounding territories.
One man rules her waters.
Kapitan Gustav Zimmer of the Imperial German Navy
commands a powerful marine unit of 150 men
- his fleet of three heavily-armed gunboats
has obliterated the puny armada of the Belgian Congo
...- to win the battle for Central Africa,
Zimmer's navy must be defeated.
Yet for the job of destroying him,
the Royal Navy selects a former military surveyor
who has never led a brigade into battle.
Lt. -Commander Geoffrey Basil Spicer-Simson
is an old Africa hand who has spent the first year of the war
behind a desk in London.
Then chance, not choice, gives him an opportunity for greatness.
"Why did we go to Tanganyika?
Because the Germans with four ships on the Lake
- were commanding the lake,
and by means of these steamers were able to supply their troops
on the frontiers with provisions and munitions.
It was important that this should be stopped."
Spicer's orders are almost surreal
- London wants him to tote his own toy navy
from England to Central Africa
a pair of 40-foot motorboats
- to be dismantled and freighted to Cape Town
- then tugged overland by steam tractor to the Congo
- a trek of over nine thousand miles
- with Zimmer's gunships waiting at the other end.
Spicer assembles the team.
Former architect of the Rhodesian railway,
paddy Wainwright is the chief engineer
- I'm tropical disease specialist,
Dr. Hother Hanschell, will be the Medical officer.
As a casual friend of Spicer's,
Dr. Hanschell Knows Spicer is not your average leader.
"Spicer-Simson was a vain man worthy of ridicule and on occasion,
great admiration at the same time.
This paradox was only possible
because of the very nature of Spicer-Simson's own behaviour,
which was quite often bizarre."
28 men will make the journey -
they are gunners, mechanics, and engineers
- not one has ever served under Spicer.
The plan to take Tanganyika from the Germans is a simple one.
Get to Tanganyika, and destroy the German fleet
by stealth and surprise.
But their own warships are converted supply boats.
"The two boats taken to Africa by the expedition were...
not at all suitable as they were,
but they were the only ones obtainable at the time.
My orders were to get away at once."
Spicer gives his mahogany warships names befitting pleasure boats
- HMS Mimi and Toutou are quick
- top speed, 20 miles per hour.
Spicer tests them on the Thames
and has a 3 pound Hotchkiss gun mounted in the fore
and a.303 Maxim in the rear.
June 15, 1915.
Stage one.
The Naval Africa Expedition leaves England
on a 6,100 mile voyage for the Cape Colony.
While Spicer and his men enjoy a placid southbound cruise,
John Lee's army of African tribesmen hacks its way north.
By early July, at Cape Town in British South Africa,
the caravan transfers from ship to train.
July 19, 1915.
Stage Two.
The entire expedition consisting of men, boats
and hundreds of boxes of supplies are moved north by rail.
At Fungurume, in the Belgian Congo,
they will meet up with Lee.
Two thousand, seven hundred miles of European-built railways
pierce the heart of a colonized continent.
After two weeks,
Spicer and his men reach the village of Fungurume as expected.
Morale is high.
But then, just as his expedition is about to begin its overland odyssey,
Spicer fires the man who blazed the trail.
He dismisses John Lee, and offers no explanation to his men.
He alone will lead his men across the burning plains
- into a jungle few Europeans have crossed
since the days of Stanley and Livingstone.
To prepare the boats for their waterless voyage,
engineer Wainwright orders them stripped of all fittings
- propellers dismounted... the axles of the carrying wagons
reinforced to carry the eight and a half-ton loads.
While final preparations are being made,
a critical member of the team arrives by a rather odd means.
Ex-policeman, Arthur Dudley has pedalled 200 miles overjungle trails
to reach the expedition.
His role,
to organize and lead the African labourers transporting the supplies.
"Dudley was Royal Navy Reserve.
He'd served in the Boer War,
now he was fooling about in Rhodesia doing transport work
But he was capable, just the sort of fellow for that.
Just enough sea Knowledge
and just enough military training to manage well."
Two months after leaving London,
Spicer's navy-on-wheels is joined by the steam engines
that will pull the boats through the forest.
The tractors are built for level country furrows
- but ahead of them lie some of Africa's most forbidding peaks.
But this strange caravan is being shadowed
by Zimmer's African spies -
"we Knew that the English intended to challenge
our supremacy of the lake.
We also Knew that the Belgians were building a boat.
Where they were building, or wanted to build, was unKnown."
If Spicer and his men make it to Lake Tanganyika, Zimmer vows,
they will not leave Africa alive.
August 18, 1915.
Stage Three.
150 miles of some of the least forgiving terrain
on Earth await the British troopers
- a wild land of disease and sudden death.
At first light, Geoffrey Spicer leads his men out of camp.
"There were no roads such as we call roads in this country,
and except for about 25 miles
the whole route ran through the thick African forest."
The dry season will last only a few more weeks
- then the autumn rains will come
- if mud swallows the tractors,
Spicer's mission... and his only shot at glory -
will be over before it begins.
The steam tractors are in the lead,
each hauling one of Spicer's little ships,
and ten tons of wood for the insatiable engines.
Four hundred Africans... men and women
- carry water, food, ammunition, medicine
- a procession that stretches for nearly two miles.
On the first day, at the first river crossing,
Mimi and her tractor nearly tumble into the current.
It is the first test of Spicer's leadership.
Undaunted, Spicer has chief engineer Wainwright come up with a plan.
Wainwright has more trees cut, reinforces the bridge,
and the convoy plods forward.
"The work was completed at 2:30 p.m.
And the trailers were towed across
and a start was made along the road at 3.
Good progress was made along the road
and at 6 p.m. A camp was formed for the night."
Spicer Knows there are more than 140 rivers and gorges still to cross.
The path they are following continues uphill for 60 miles,
then they reach the Mitumba Mountains, a 6,400 foot range.
Day by day, mile by mile, the former desk officer grows more confident
- his boasts more outrageous... the men love him.
"...he appealed immensely to the ratings...
They all appreciate a commanding officer who's a bit mad, eccentric.
And he was obviously mad.
Therefore he was marvellous.
"I'd say he could not refrain from telling absurd stories
about his prowess at shooting the lions he'd shot,
although I'd never heard of any lions in Gambia."
The caravan survives on the skill of its African hunters,
living off wild buck and guinea fowl.
As for water,
Hanschell and a team of Africans find the nearest water source.
Much of the water is for the steam tractors.
The rest is filtered, boiled,
then filtered twice more and used for tea, cooking
and the next day's water rations.
The steam engines are insatiable consumers of water and firewood
- advance parties prepare storage caches of lumber.
"The journey through the Bush was divided up into three 50-mile stages,
and at the end of each stage was built a depot
to keep the sun off the provisions and ammunition."
The Englishmen, many of them new to Africa,
fear lions and crocodiles,
but Doctor Hanschell's duty is keeping the men healthy
in a region plagued by unseen killers.
"One very valuable thing was the paymaster.
He began to get some boils on his shoulders,
and out of the boils popped worms, big maggots rather.
The men all saw this, I showed it,
and I said, 'Now see, here you are going through a country
where the danger's from insects, not from wild animals but insects.
You see what they can do."
>From the spies, crude telegraph lines convey fragments of news
to Kapitan Zimmer
- he believes that Spicer has come to help the Belgians
build new warships at Lake Tanganyika...
"Around Lukuga and south of there by Kalemie
there seemed to be only defensive building going on."
But, about Mimi and Toutou , Zimmer Knows nothing.
While the confident Germans wait,
the English plod on... one agonizing mile at a time.
"Three and a quarter miles a day was the average for the boats.
Occasionally we did rather more,
and on one occasion we covered 14 and 3/4 miles,
but there were many days
when we were lucky if we did a mile and a half.
One day, we did only three-quarters of a mile."
By late August, Spicer Knows he needs help
if he is to outrun the rains.
At a village called Mwenda Makosi,
the British commandeer 42 oxen to help
drag the boats up the Mitumba Range.
When the rains begin,
they will turn the plains into a quagmire
too shallow for ships, too muddy for wheels.
Until then, heat is the deadliest enemy
- the thirst for water is unquenchable
- water for the engines... water for the oxen...
a few cupfulls a day for the men.
Then, in early September... a sudden storm of fire.
Spicer has his men create a fire break
He then orders that the precious mahogany boats
must be pretected from flying embers.
For Doctor Hanshell, it is a day of sheer terror.
"...we nearly lost the whole thing by fire...
Here was this war train bearing down on us at a terrific rate.
We'd burnt off, we set fire to it, only just in time, just in time,
we moved the guns, the wagons and everything onto the burnt place,
and the thing stopped... it was so damn near it came."
In the weeks that follow, the oxen prove their worth.
"The top of the plateau was reached on September 8, 1915,
and this was a very triumphant moment for the expedition,
for there were some who had said that it was impossible to get there.
Our difficulties were by no means at an end,
for on the downward trek from this point to Sankisia
there was some risky work to be done
in lowering the boats down the sharp spurs of the mountain..."
They are still weeks away from the combat zone.
Using 42 oxen, 2 road locomotives, and hundreds of men,
the expedition struggles to get down the mountain.
"On more than one occassion
the wheels of the boats dropped into ant-bear holes.
The only way to get out was to fill up the hole with logs,
gradually jacking the boat up until it reached the level.
It was only by good luck that they received no damage."
"There is a great deal of thunder
and it appears the rains are not far away.
The journey now, has become a race to get to the railway
before the rains brake and the roads become impassable."
Finally, the land is level, but the dangers remain deadly.
This is the country of the tse tse fly
- carrier of the sleeping sicKness that kills both men and beasts...
villages are nearly deserted
- the ghost towns of central Africa.
No rain falls... this is a dreadful blessing -
drought scorches the plains.
"At one point the traction engines came to a standstill
for want of water,
and the members of the expedition were getting only half a pint a day."
Lt-Commander Spicer offers local women a bolt of coloured cloth
if they will trek eight miles to the nearest well
- hundreds accept the bargain, and the convoy moves on.
For the first time since he tested them on the Thames,
Geoffrey Spicer's two-boat flotilla reaches water deep enough
to sail upon
- Mimi and Toutou are reassembled and lowered into the Lualaba River.
October 1, 1915.
Stage Four.
They will float, or drag their boats, 200 miles downstream
- strange apparitions to the resident wildlife.
"Progress on the river is very slow.
I think Mimi and Tou-Tou hold the record for grounding,
as on october 7 they were aground 14 times
in twelve miles."
Even on water, Spicer's flotilla manages barely ten miles a day
- then, at the rail depot at Kabalo,
Mimi and Toutou must be
- packaged safely for another journey by rail.
October 22, 1915.
Stage Five.
The final phase of the long odyssey
- 173 miles across precarious trestles and crumbling bridges
- to the Belgian shores of Lake Tanganyika.
Spicer rivals are already preparing their reception
- Gustav Zimmer has followed every mile of Spicer's incredible trek,
still unaware of the unlikely cargo.
"...the effort to find out more
about the area around Lukuga and Kalemie was resumed in earnest.
...we took down a lot of telegraph wires,
and blew up telegraph stations.
As soon as the British reach their final destination,
he will send his gunboats to destroy Geoffrey Spicer
and his half-mad dreams.
October 28, 1915.
After four months and over 9,000 miles of travel,
the unlikely odyssey of Lt. -Commander Geoffrey Spicer
reaches the blue heart of Africa... Lake Tanganyika.
Finally, he has reached his battleground.
At Kalemie on the western shoreline,
a defensive network of guns, troop quarters,
and shipbuilding facilities guards the back door of the Belgian Congo.
For their British allies, the Belgians have prepared simple dwellings
- Spicer claims the largest to be his headquarters...
and hoists the banner of the Royal Navy
- an emblem of his growing lust for power.
Kalemie has guns, but no harbour.
To protect his boats from the Germans,
Spicer insists the Belgians construct a harbour.
"The decision to build the port was come to owing to the facts
that it is impossible to operate without a defended port,
and the existing defences at Kalemie
will amply protect the port selected.
Hundreds of tons of rock are blasted
and positioned into the crocodile-infested waters
to create an arced jetty.
Atop the rocks, traintracks and a launching slip are lain
which will allow Spicer to slide his miniature Navy
into the lake in minutes.
While the jetty is taking shape,
the Belgians give Spicer the details of the 3 German ships
he must destroy.
The smallest German vessel is the Kingani.
At 55 feet long and 12 feet wide,
she is far larger and better armed than Mimi or Toutou.
Her compatriot, the Hedwig von Wissmann,
is even larger, but slower.
Carrying two powerful guns and a crew of 22 sailors,
she has room for 200 extra troops.
The Graf von Gotzen dwarfs them all.
An 800 ton monster,
she is over 20 times the size of the British speedboats.
Her massive guns can blast Spicer's boats
to oblivion with one shell.
The little British boats are seriously outmanned,
outgunned and outsized.
To tilt the balance of power,
Spicer plots a surprise attack to capture the Kingani
- it is an audacious plan...
for a desk officer who has never led a combat mission.
Across the lake,
Gustav Zimmer plans his own strategy of strength.
"...we learned from intercepted Belgian telegram communications
that they were looking for a building location...
As soon as it was practical, the reconnaissance work began."
December 1, 1915.
German Lieutenants Walter Rosenthal and Job odebrecht
embark on a stealthy mission of reconnaisance.
In four successive evenings,
the two ships slip in under darKness, snapping off night
exposures of the harbour.
The next evening,
Lt. Rosenthal risks his life in a daring solo mission.
"He wanted to swim ashore,
to find out more about the drydock and the building of the new ship,
despite the danger of crashing waves and crocodiles...
he reached the drydock, took notice of two boats,
then swam back to the designated meeting place."
But a panicky German officer orders the Kingani to leave without him.
Rosenthal is forced to hide out on the Allied side of the lake.
At daybreak, abandoned in enemy waters,
Rosenthal is taken prisoner
- Zimmer is still ignorant of Spicer's Jungle Navy.
Mid-December, the rains come
- work is impossible -
all they can do is wait.
"We are having heavy rains almost daily,
and one or two members of the expedition on an average,
are always down with slight attacks of fever."
On December 23, Spicer decides it is time to go to war.
Far from his desk in London, Africa has freed Spicer's spirit.
His battle dress reflects his liberation.
"...to the amazement of the crew and to the Belgians and the natives,
he didn't wear shorts,
he wore a little, tiny little khaki skirt with. Pleats in it."
Spicer and Britain need allies
- the men of the Ba Holo Holo nation see the eccenttic white man
as a natural chief.
Christmas Eve.
The mahogany gunboats undergo
their first trial runs on African waters.
"On Christmas Day we took a rest,
and it being the first time the whole expedition had been together,
we had a big celebration.
December 26, 1915.
The Germans come to fight.
Spicer is reading prayers when an enemy ship is sighted.
Spicer ignores the enemy's approach
- he alone will decide when his private war will commence.
"I finished prayers and then sent off the hands to get ready."
Doctor Hanshell and other non-combatants head to the cliffs
to watch the battle as if it was a cricket match.
"...The paymaster and I and the petty officer Murphy and so on,
we had a grandstand view of it.
It all happened right under our eyes."
At 11:25 a.m.,
Spicer and his fleet set off in pursuit of the enemy.
Spicer is in the Mimi and Lieutenant Dudley
- without his bicycle...
is at the helm of the Toutou.
Spicer's plan is to sneak in behind the Kingani,
and attack her from both sides.
The Kingani can only fire on them with her bow guns.
Kapitan Zimmer has sent the Kingani
to blow up the Belgian harbour installation.
But instead, is confronted by Spicer's entire navy.
"She was well inside the bay
before she was aware of the existence of the British boats on the Lake
...and the Mimi and Toutou rapidly overhauled her
and opened fire."
"An early shot from one of our guns carried away her mast,
and she got several hits below the water line."
In the ensuing half hour, eleven enemy sailors are rounded up.
Lt. Dudley takes control of the captured Kingani,
and brings her and the captured survivors back to base.
At Kalemie, Spicer is showered with sand... a traditional gesture
that confirms his mastery of the earth he stands on.
Three German sailors are buried with military dignity.
The British have suffered no casualties
- but the battle for the blue heart of Africa has barely begun.
In London, he was ignored,
but at Lake Tanganyika, Geoffrey Spicer is hailed as a hero
for his brilliant ambush of the Kingani.
He must now repair his damaged prize.
British and Belgian engineers patch up the Kingani's 11 holes,
and refit her with a larger 12-pounder gun.
When they are finished, Spicer re-christens the German gunboat
as if she were a French poodle, naming her HMS Fifi.
With a bolstered sense of confidence,
Spicer's behaviour becomes more outrageous, more bizarre.
Twice a week, he performs a ceremonial public bath,
complete with cigarettes and vermouth
- his body is decorated with symbolic tattoos...
Spicer's men suspect he has gone mad...
but the Ba holo holo warriors understand the white man's message
- they call him "bwana chifungatumbo"
- Lord of the Loincloth...
February 8, 1916.
". We got information from native spies
that the Kingani had been sunk by a new coastal artillery battery.
I decided to check into this myself
and sent along the Gotzen, the Hedwig von Wissmann,
and a smaller boat."
The Germans still do not Know the Royal Navy has invaded the Lake.
"...The Hedwig von Wissmann was to get to the Belgian coast
in the early morning and enquire about the position
from friendly spies,
then head back to Cape Kungwe
where she would meet with the Gotzen at around noon
on February 9th."
Then together, Zimmer and odebrecht will attack the harbour.
At dawn on February 9, the dance begins,
with control of Central Africa at stake.
It is a humid, hazy morning
- distant vessels shimmer like mirages in the heat.
Through the haze, Spicer spots the Germans.
Spicer leads the attack in his new flagship, the Fifi
- chief engineer Wainwright takes the speedier,
more maneuverable Mimi.
"...the weather conditions
made the estimation of distance very difficult...
and until the enemy closed to within 5000 yards,
he appeared to be a dark blob suspended above the horizon."
For more than an hour,
Spicer's shells fall short of the fleeing German ship
- but the Mimi cuts off her escape...
and forces the Germans to turn and fight.
As if protected from death by his magic tattoos,
the Lord of the Loincloth refuses to take cover.
The battle of Lake Tanganyika lasts 90 furious minutes.
Hemmed in by Wainwright in the Mimi,
Spicer's cannon blasts a fatal wound in the Wissmann's engine room.
"In a few minutes the Hedwig von Wissmann burst into flames,
and finally she up-ended and went down."
>From among the wreckage,
Spicer retrieves the German battle flag.
The first enemy banner captured in combat... anywhere -
in the most deadly war in human history.
Twenty-one Germans survive the explosion
- seven others are killed... Again, there is not a single British casualty -
now, only one target remains... the Gotzen -
the mightiest of all warships on this deadly inland sea.
To the Ba holo holo people, the sinking of the Wissmann
confirms Geofrey Spicer's status as an indestructible warrior...
a man whose magic places him in the realm of the gods.
For miles up and down the Lake,
elaborate clay fetishes are shaped in Spicer's image.
"And clay and wood images grew up all around the place.
The helmet and the beard and the jupe and the bare arms
with scratches on to make the tatooing.
He was the great Bwana Ikuba."
At the peak of his powers,
Spicer is told that his war against Zimmer is over
- the allies will import a new weapon... aeroplanes...
to destroy the Gozten from the sky.
June, 1916.
Allied seaplanes launch a barrage of bombings on Kigoma.
Zimmer decides to scuttle his flagship.
"It was hard for us to blow up our last ships,
but they could not be allowed to fall into enemy hands,
for they would have construed it as a kind of victory.
We conceded to the stronger force,
but our willingness to serve and our enthusiasm was not broken."
Germany's dreams of an African empire are shattered
- thwarted by an unlikely hero and his jungle navy.
After almost another year of protecting the Lake,
Spicer and his men are ordered back to England.
His warships left behind.
The British Naval Africa Expedition is a total success.
Its military objective attained,
its men back home, unharmed.
He has led his men on a bizarre, nearly impossible mission,
a small step on the long road to history.
He is awarded the Distinguished Service order
and 15 others including Henschell, Wainwright
and Dudley are also honoured.
After the awards and the ceremonies
the Lord of the Loincloth returns to the same desk he left in 1915.
As a warrior his duty is done.
"...the expedition was the smallest ever sent out
- there being only twenty-eight men all told.
And it was the only expedition
that had come back without a single casualty."