Action at Sphinxhaven

On 30 May 1915 British armed steamers and soldiers of the King’s African Rifles attacked Sphinxhaven (German: Sphinxhafen), a small landing place on the eastern, German shore of Lake Nyasa (today Liuli in Tanzania), named after rocks resembling a sphinx. Their target was the German steamer Hermann von Wissmann, named after the African explorer and governor Hermann von Wissmann, the only German vessel on the lake. The British chronology of the war records the day as the British securing command of Lake Nyasa.

A second attempt

The British had controlled the lake since the first days of the war. In August 1914 the armed steamer Guendolen (also spelt Gwendolen) surprised the Hermann von Wissmann hauled up on the shore at Sphinxhaven for repairs. Her captain did not yet know that war had broken out and was taken prisoner, and the British disabled the vessel by removing the most important parts from her engine room. In March 1915 command of the lake flotilla was taken over by Lieutenant-Commander George Hamilton Dennistoun of the Royal Navy, who brought a detachment of sailors from the cruiser HMS Fox and five 6-pounder Hotchkiss guns. In May word came that the Germans were trying to repair the steamer. It was decided to send an expedition to tow her away or finish destroying her.

About 180 askaris of the 1st Battalion, King’s African Rifles, with two machine guns, under Captain H. G. Collins, embarked at Fort Johnston (today Mangochi) on the Guendolen and the mission steamer Chauncy Maples. According to the British official history this happened on 20 May, according to a report from Nyasaland on 26 May. The ships took on medical staff at Nkhata Bay, crossed the lake after dark on 29 May and lay off the German shore before dawn.

The assault on the landing place

The soldiers landed on a beach in a bay south of Sphinxhaven (sources give from one to three miles) and were ashore by 4.15 a.m., meeting no resistance. They advanced along a narrow path through tall grass and thick bush, under fire from German outposts. Meanwhile the Guendolen shelled the northern point of the bay and then a small stone fort on the hill behind the landing place, from which a machine gun was firing. At about 11 a.m. the ship ceased fire, bugles sounded and the askaris charged with the bayonet. The fort’s garrison did not wait for the assault and vanished into the bush. Dennistoun recalled that the only thing found in the trenches was a dachshund, which afterwards sailed with them on the Chauncy Maples for a long time.

The Hermann von Wissmann lay on the shore, still with the damage from August 1914. She could not be pushed into the water and towed away, so the British blew two holes in her hull with dynamite and destroyed her propeller and boilers as well as the slipway on which she stood. At about 2.30 p.m. the detachment began to return to the ships. The Germans then came back and opened fire on the rearguard, which was covered by the guns and machine guns of both steamers. On the British side only one volunteer was wounded. The British counted one killed and five wounded on the German side. They captured about 7,000 rounds of ammunition and two flags: a German one and a green one with a crescent and star. According to German figures the landing place was defended by a handful of men, a dozen or so or about twenty soldiers.

Significance

The action was small, but it removed the only threat to British shipping on the lake, which was used to supply the troops on the border of Nyasaland and German East Africa. Collins’s askaris then disembarked at Vua and on 1 June joined the field force at Karonga, where in September 1914 a German attack had been repulsed. Dennistoun received the Distinguished Service Order (DSO) for the action. The British repaired the wreck of the Hermann von Wissmann only in 1918 and commissioned her under the name King George.