In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

In terms of the war outside European waters there were four Allied undertakings in Africa, of which three proved difficult and protracted. The exception was the campaign that saw British and French forces secure Togo, which was literally over in a matter of days. The campaigns in German South West Africa and the Cameroons lasted into 1915 and 1916, respectively, while the campaign in German East Africa came to an end only with the armistice in Europe. The naval dimension of these various campaigns was more or less over within a year of the outbreak of war.1 The campaign in Togoland saw no real naval involvement because it was over within a month, German coastal towns being taken by overland offensives by the British from the west and the French from the east. British forces occupied Lomé on 7 August and reached Amuchu on the 26th, where a German military delegation presented a letter of unconditional surrender, effected the following day when Kamina was occupied; in the meantime, the radio station had been comprehensively wrecked.2 The campaign in the Cameroons was a more substantial affair. The British, following the embarrassment of being obliged to reembark troops that were put ashore at Victoria, on Ambas Bay, after they had been surrounded by German soldiers (4–7 September), committed the armored cruiser Cumberland, the second-class protected cruiser Challenger, and the third–class protected cruisers Astræa and Sirius, the gunboat Dwarf, the sloop Rinaldo, and various assorted auxiliaries, plus the stores ship Trojan, to a series of actions that resulted in the capture of Doula and Bonaberi and shipping in the chapter eleven Naval Support of Operations in Africa 288 from sarajevo to constantinople two ports and in neighboring creeks on 27 September.3 With reference to the latter, and the Germans sank seven ships in attempts to block the harbors, the British captured nine sea-going steamers of 31,000 tons that were fully laden, six smaller vessels, a trawler, four dredgers, nearly thirty launches, and more than fifty lighters. Of the six smaller vessels four had been sunk but these were raised and returned to service. One, the governor’s steam yacht Herzogin Elisabeth, plus the demilitarized gunboat Soden and the tug Adriana, which were the two of the six not sunk, were armed and entered service with the Royal Navy as the Margaret Elizabeth, Sokoto, and the Sir Frederick, respectively. A floating dock, capable of taking a 1,200-ton ship, was also raised and returned to service.4 The only naval episode of note was the destruction of the Nachtigal, an armed merchantman that was destroyed as a result of explosions induced after being hit by shells when it attempted to ram the Dwarf after dusk on 16 September. The Dwarf survived a glancing blow and was returned to action within a matter of days. The naval dimension of this campaign proved to be slender, in part because the main burden of offensive operations fell upon Belgian and French military formations and in part because of the peculiar circumstances of coastal and riverine operations in the Cameroons. The very considerable size of the theater and the smallness of the forces committed to operations in the Cameroons in effect meant that the holding of towns and positions, against an enemy possessed of local knowledge and initiative, was very difficult and indeed made for a naval effort primarily directed to the securing of coastal installations rather than operations into the interior. Moreover, the waterfall some 10 miles upstream from the estuary rendered the Campo unnavigable, while any major effort from the coast had to await the dry season and water levels in the rivers that rendered operations problematical. Accordingly, as the campaign in the Cameroons unfolded, and as military formations moved ever farther inland, the relative importance of the naval and riverine contribution declined, and Allied naval units found their lift capacity increasingly used to carry food in order to provide for refugees. TheBritishmaintainedwhatweregrandioselytermed“flotillas”ontheCampo, Nyong, and the Sanaga, and there were, more modestly, patrols on the Wuri and Dibamba,5 but it was a token of weakness that it was not until 9–17 April 1915 that the British were able to conduct a series of raids on Kribi, Plantation, Longyi— which were three coastal villages—and on various settlements on the Nyong estuary . It was not until 8–10 July that Ebea, Etima, and Dehane on the estuary were secured on successive days, and...

Share