Free 2004 - Mimi and Toutou Go Forth by Prefers to remain anonymous, Giles Foden Page B

the enemy. Spicer knew nothing at all about this ship and neither did the Admiralty. At 1,200 tons, she was roughly 20 times the tonnage of the one Spicer had been sent to sink (the Hedwig ) and 150 times the tonnage of Mimi and Toutou.↓
    ≡ See Catalogue of Vessels, p. 313.
    The disparity would certainly have given Spicer pause, had he known, as would the news of Rosenthal’s posting as captain of the Kingani . Rosenthal had, after all, seen serious action in the Rufiji. After what had happened to Wenig and the rest of the Königsberg ’s crew, the Brits could not reasonably expect any mercy from Rosenthal. On arriving in Kigoma, he immediately took out the Kingani on raiding parties. According to Colonel L. B. Cane the Kingani , a small wooden steamer of fifty-five feet that had come by train from the Indian Ocean, later destroyed two ancient British steamers, possessing neither engines nor boilers, whose hulls were lying at the southern end of the lake. They also raided Bismarckburg (now Kasanga), and captured four machine-guns and over ninety miles of telegraph wire from a Belgian company there, and bombarded and attacked various other lake stations.↓
    ≡ Tanganyika Notes and Records (1947). In fact, the Kingani had a wooden deck and superstructure, but a steel hull.
    §
    If a tiny wooden steamer could have such an effect, what more could the Hedwig and the Götzen do?
    How Spicer didn’t know about the Götzen is a mystery one can only attribute to the parlous state of communications in Africa and numerous misunderstandings between the Belgian and British governments. The German supership had been launched in Kigoma on 8 June—the day Spicer had made his practice run on the Thames in Mimi , with Engineer Lieutenant Cross at the wheel.
    As it happens, Spicer met Cross the moment he arrived in Bulawayo. The rest of the Naval Africa Expedition had arrived before their Commander and were lunching at the railway hotel in the town. Finding a pony in the yard tethered to a post, Cross had mounted it and started riding round and round. The other men began to tease him, but unbeknown to them Spicer had arrived. Striding forward in his naval uniform, he loudly ordered Cross to dismount, adding that horse-stealing was a crime punishable by hanging in Rhodesia.
    As Cross did so, the assembled and well-lunched company began to make comments about a new medal ribbon on Spicer’s chest: the Africa General Service Medal. He may well have heard their whispered remarks, but by chance an African messenger boy chose that moment to run into the station yard clutching a piece of paper and yelling ‘Captain Cross! Telegram for Captain Cross!’
    Spicer froze. ‘I can readily understand that an Engineer Lieutenant RNR would want to be thought an army captain,’ he said, ‘but as he is now serving under an RN commander and in an RN expedition, I, Commander Spicer-Simson RN, must order in future that Engineer Lieutenant Cross, Royal Naval Reserve, will bear that in mind and keep his army preferences until he has left the Navy.’
    It seems Cross’s friends in Cape Town had mistaken his peculiar uniform for that of an army officer, which is what the three pips on his shoulder suggested. However, Spicer’s outraged snobbery was entirely typical and his men must have hated the sight of his tall frame by now as he strode out of the yard. Cross could be a tricky customer—it was readily agreed he was hard to get on with—but Spicer’s posturing merely alienated him from the rest of the expedition.
    It did not bode well for the future. They all had a very long way to go and, when they got to Lake Tanganyika, a very big job to do. Even for fast, manoeuvrable craft such as Mimi and Toutou , sinking the Hedwig would be no mean feat. But as they climbed back on to the train at Bulawayo, bound for Elizabethville in the Belgian Congo, via Northern Rhodesia, Spicer’s men had no inkling that the Hedwig was the least of their