Allies capture Duala

On 27 September 1914 the German authorities surrendered Duala, the main port and largest town of German Kamerun, together with Bonaberi on the other side of the river. The town was occupied by Anglo-French troops under the command of General Charles Dobell. The British chronology of the war records this event under the date 26–27 September, because the day before ships had shelled the town, and the capitulation followed the next day.

The road to Duala

Duala lies deep inside the wide estuary of the river Wouri. The Germans had closed access to the port with mines and with ships scuttled in the channel. Throughout September ships of the Royal Navy and the Nigerian Marine cleared the approach to the town, under fire from the shore and attacked by German boats. By the end of the month the channel was clear enough for the cruiser HMS Challenger, the gunboat HMS Dwarf and the troop transports to go up the estuary.

Dobell’s force, according to his report, numbered about 4,300 African soldiers from the British colonial regiments of West Africa and French units of Senegalese tirailleurs, commanded by white officers.

The capitulation

Dobell called on the German commandant to surrender the town. When he refused, on 26 September the ships shelled Duala and the troops prepared to land. The Germans did not have the forces to defend a port that lay within range of naval guns. Their main forces, the Schutztruppe, commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Carl Zimmermann, had already withdrawn inland along the railway lines. Before leaving they blew up the wireless station. On 27 September the commandant capitulated, and the Allied troops entered Duala and Bonaberi without a fight.

The haul was considerable. The Allies seized warehouses, stores and several guns, and in the port they captured German merchant ships and numerous smaller vessels, including the gunboat Soden. According to various sources there were several, or about ten, merchant ships. According to Dobell’s report, over 400 Germans, military and civilian, were taken prisoner and shipped to Britain. For the German forces in Kamerun this was a painful loss, depriving them of men, supplies and their only large port.

A long campaign

The fall of Duala did not end the fighting. Zimmermann concentrated his forces around Jaunde in the interior, on an upland covered with tropical forest. Dobell’s troops advanced along the railways and rivers, and on 26 October they took Edéa. French columns from Equatorial Africa attacked from the south and east, and British units from Nigeria from the north. The fighting in difficult terrain, amid disease and constant supply problems, went on for more than a year.

The Allies took Jaunde only in January 1916. In February 1916 Zimmermann led the remnants of his forces, together with thousands of African soldiers and their families, into neutral Spanish Guinea, where they were interned. The last German post in Kamerun, the mountain fort near Mora in the north of the colony, capitulated on 18 February 1916.