British occupy Lindi

On 17 September 1916 the Royal Navy landed Major Henry Tyndall’s Indian 40th Pathans at Lindi, the main port of the southern part of German East Africa. The Germans did not defend the town. According to the regimental history, they did not want to fight the ships’ guns, but intended to keep their new garrisons as close to the coast as possible. In the harbour channel a sweep from the cruiser Talbot brought up and detonated three German sea mines, and about 40 land mines were found and made safe on the beaches. The next day a detachment of the Indian 5th Light Infantry landed at Kiswere, halfway between Lindi and Kilwa.

Lindi, lying on a bay at the mouth of the Lukuledi river, was an old port of the Arab and Swahili caravans that brought ivory and slaves here from the region of Lake Nyasa. In German times the town had about 4,000 inhabitants and was a district seat, with a customs house, a post and telegraph office and a Schutztruppe garrison. Through its port were also shipped to Berlin the dinosaur bones dug up in 1909–1913 by a German expedition on the nearby hill of Tendaguru, including the remains of a giant sauropod known today as Giraffatitan.

The southern ports

After the capture of Dar es Salaam General Jan Smuts decided to cut the Germans off from the entire coast as far as the border with Portuguese East Africa. On 7 September the British took Kilwa. On 11 September about 1,100 men under Tyndall’s command embarked on transports at Dar es Salaam: the Pathans, a battalion made up of detachments of the 129th Baluchis and the 5th Light Infantry, about 200 riflemen from Zanzibar and Mafia Island, about 200 Royal Marines and several dozen sailors with twelve machine guns.

On 13 September the force landed unopposed at Mikindani, about 190 kilometres south of Kilwa, and left more than a hundred Baluchis there as a garrison. The rest marched along the coast to Sudi Bay, where in March the German ship Marie, having run the blockade, had unloaded howitzers and ammunition for Lettow-Vorbeck. According to the regimental history, Sudi was occupied without a fight on 15 September. Leaving two companies of Baluchis there, the troops returned by boat to the transports, which had to lie far off the shallow shore, and sailed north to Lindi.

Smuts’s plan also involved the Portuguese. General Gil, who had arrived in Mozambique with troops from Portugal, wanted first to march north along the coast and take Mikindani, Lindi, Kiswere and Kilwa in turn. Smuts considered that these ports were easier to take from the sea, and proposed to the Portuguese a march inland, to the fertile Masasi area. At the beginning of September the Portuguese corps was still assembling after its long journey, weakened by disease, and preparing to cross the Rovuma. In April the Portuguese had occupied the Kionga Triangle at its mouth, but in May they had failed to cross to the other bank.

Significance

The British official history (Hordern) notes that from this moment the entire coast of the German colony remained in British hands. The last route by which arms and supplies could reach Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck from the sea had been closed. Lindi became one of the British bases in the south, but for a long time its garrison did not venture far beyond the town. When on 27 September Tyndall went about 25 kilometres inland with a hundred soldiers, he ran into a strong German force in concealed trenches and after a fight had to return to Lindi.