British occupy Kilwa

On 7 September 1916 British ships landed troops in two ports bearing the name Kilwa, some 220 kilometres south of Dar es Salaam, which had been taken three days earlier. At dawn the cruiser Talbot and the transport Barjora entered the port of Kilwa Kisiwani, “Kilwa on the island”. The port was deserted, and the 2nd Battalion of the West India Regiment went ashore unhindered. Further north the battleship Vengeance brought to Kilwa Kivinje, usually called simply Kilwa, a small detachment of Royal Marines and African riflemen from Zanzibar and Mafia Island under Colonel C. U. Price.

At Kilwa Kivinje the British expected an organised defence. The riflemen from Mafia, who landed on the northern side of Gingwera Bay, had a brief skirmish with a German detachment. But when Vengeance opened fire with her 305 mm guns on the trenches on Singino hill behind the town, white flags appeared on the shore and the town surrendered without further resistance. The British occupied the Singino and Mpara hills, and the Germans vanished into the interior.

Both ports had a long history. On the island of Kilwa Kisiwani the capital of the Kilwa Sultanate flourished in the Middle Ages, one of the richest cities of the Swahili coast, which was captured in 1505 by the Portuguese under Francisco de Almeida. Kilwa Kivinje grew up later on the mainland, further north, as a port for the trade in slaves and ivory. The Germans made it the seat of a district. It was in the Kilwa district, in the Matumbi hills, that the Maji Maji Rebellion broke out in 1905. For the British, however, what mattered more was that Kilwa Kisiwani had a deep, sheltered harbour, one of the best on that coast.

General Jan Smuts issued the order to occupy the ports south of Dar es Salaam, in agreement with the navy, on 6 September. According to the British official history (Hordern), from the first days of September it had become increasingly clear that Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck intended to fall back to the lower Rufiji and then towards the Portuguese border, in order to drag out the campaign as long as possible. Smuts had for some time been planning a landing at Kilwa, from where his troops could close the Germans’ road south, beyond the Matandu river. There were also rumours, which Hordern calls “wild”, that Lettow-Vorbeck wanted to give up the fight and escape with the Germans by sea. One of them even spoke of a Turkish aircraft that was to fly from Palestine to fetch him. Help from outside, on the other hand, could not be disregarded. Despite the blockade, two German supply ships had managed to reach the colony. The second of them, Marie, unloaded howitzers, mountain guns and ammunition in Sudi Bay in the south of the country in March 1916.

The occupation of Kilwa began the taking over of the whole southern coast. In the following days the British made landings at further ports, as far as the border with Portuguese East Africa. Kilwa soon became an important base. As early as the end of September, preparations for operations from this port were, as Smuts reckoned, to induce the Germans to withdraw from the Mgeta river or at least deter them from a counter-offensive.