Empire_ What Ruling the World Did to the British - Jeremy Paxman [111]
Far-called our navies melt away –
On dune and headland sinks the fire –
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!
As it happened, the first British naval engagement of the First World War involved none of the enormous fleet Kipling had seen assembled at Spithead. It came in British imperial Africa.
On 5 August 1914, Mr Webb, the District Commissioner in the little trading station at Karonga, on the north-western shore of Lake Nyasa, received a coded telegram. ‘Tipsified Pumgirdles Germany Novel’ it read. After quickly consulting his code book, he began sending frantic messages to British residents in the area, warning them that their country was now at war. It would be hard to imagine a place more remote from the slaughter set off by a pistol shot in Sarajevo than Karonga, a sweltering former Arab slaving station on the shore of a Rift Valley lake in a British protectorate in east Africa. The town’s main use was as a base for the British trading company on the lake, and the military force available to Mr Webb consisted of four white men and a handful of African policemen. But the lake also lapped against the colony of German East Africa, and if the Germans could transport troops across the water, the empire was in danger. The colonial Governor, Sir George ‘Utility’ Smith, was adamant: the entire German naval presence on the lake had to be neutralized at once. This was in fact a single gunboat, the Hermann von Wissmann. It was to be ‘sunk, burned or otherwise destroyed’. The vessel chosen to accomplish this appointment with destiny was the British gunboat the Guendolen, captained by Commander E. L. Rhoades, RNVR, a short, red-haired, bearded man with a well-pickled liver and a vast repertoire of filthy songs. His enthusiasm for well-lubricated evenings of dirty jokes was shared by his good friend Herr Berndt. Until now, the fact that Herr Berndt was commander of the Hermann von Wissmann had not been a problem, and the two men often arranged for their training exercises to coincide: their evenings in the bar much enlivened when one or the other had managed to get his gunboat to stage a successful mock attack.
Rhoades’s first problem on receiving the order to destroy his friend’s vessel was that no one knew how to fire the Hotchkiss gun with which the Guendolen was equipped. Eventually, he found an African Lakes Corporation salesman who had once learned the basics of gunnery years before. Then, having located some obsolete three-pound ammunition, Rhoades set out on 8 August to engage the Wissmann. To the commander’s delight he found his friend’s gunboat drawn up high and dry on the beach, undergoing repairs. He ordered the salesman to open fire. A cascade of shells now began to rain down upon the bush, as the rapidly recruited gunners attempted to counteract the effects of defective ammunition, lack of practice and the swell on the lake. Finally, after fifteen minutes, one of the shells found its mark. The sailors on the Guendolen raised a cheer and then were intrigued to see a man on the shore in white shorts and singlet jump into a small boat and begin to row furiously towards them. As he came nearer they recognized the oarsman and could hear him shouting. As one of them recalled later, he approached the Guendolen screaming, ‘Gott for damn, Rrrrhoades … Gott for damn: vos you dronk?’ Rhoades allowed Captain Berndt to clamber aboard, poured him a glass of whisky and then informed