British blockade of Kamerun

At midnight on 23–24 April 1915 a formal naval blockade of the coast of German Kamerun came into force. It was declared on the instructions of the governments in London and Paris. It covered almost the entire coast of the colony, except for the mouth of the Kamerun River, where the Allied-held port of Duala lay, earlier declared an open port, and a strip of coast south of Spanish Muni.

Smuggling through Muni

Since the fall of Duala in September 1914 the German forces in Kamerun had had no port of their own. Supplies nevertheless reached them through neighbouring Spanish Guinea, a neutral colony made up of mainland Muni (today Mbini) and the island of Fernando Po (today Bioko). According to the British official history of the campaign, German agents, helped by sympathisers on Fernando Po and in Muni, organised regular communications and convoys from there into Kamerun. As early as November 1914 the Allies knew that the Germans were receiving supplies by this route, and in December that cases, most probably of ammunition, were passing through Muni.

Captain Cyril Fuller, commanding the Allied naval forces off the Kamerun coast, had recommended to the Admiralty as early as 24 November 1914 that a blockade be declared, but the Admiralty did not agree at the time. General Charles Dobell, commander of the Allied expedition, therefore proposed that a British consul be appointed at Bata, the main port of Muni, to watch the movement of goods. Gunboats and smaller armed vessels patrolled the coast, and flotillas of boats watched the river mouths through which goods were smuggled inland.

Blockade at sea and on land

A formal blockade made it possible to stop and seize any ship that tried to reach the blockaded coast, even under a neutral flag. The British official history considers it fully justified: after it was declared, the Allies found proof in captured German letters and other documents that the cargoes stopped had indeed been destined for Kamerun. In the spring and summer of 1915 the blockading forces were strengthened. In the spring two Elder Dempster ships, Lagos and Uromi, were armed, in May the armed trawler Vauban arrived from France, and in June the old cruiser HMS Sirius and the sloop HMS Rinaldo came out from England. By the end of June the blockade and patrols were being carried out by several British and French warships, including the French Friant and Surprise, armed ships and many smaller vessels.

The blockade was declared while the Allies were making their first march on Jaunde. When the march collapsed in June, Dobell decided that rather than a costly advance inland it would be better to force the Germans to surrender by cutting off the food supplies that came through Muni. The War Office agreed. The naval blockade did not, however, close the land border with Muni. When Kamerun fell in February 1916, the remnants of the German forces, together with thousands of African soldiers and their families, crossed into Muni, where they were interned. On 1 March 1916 the Allies lifted the blockade of the coast.