British occupy Mafia Island

The British chronology of the war records under 12 January 1915 the occupation by the British of Mafia island, part of German East Africa. According to the war diary of the British units, the landing force went ashore as early as 10 January, and the main fight took place the following day. The date of 12 January probably corresponds to the surrender of the island’s German authorities or to the day on which news of it arrived.

An island facing the delta

Mafia lies in the Indian Ocean, south of Zanzibar, opposite the delta of the Rufiji river. The Germans had taken it over in 1890. Since the end of October 1914 the German cruiser Königsberg had been hiding in the backwaters of the delta, blockaded by British ships. The British lacked a safe base nearby from which to watch the delta, supply the blockading ships and gather intelligence. Mafia was ideal for this, and the island’s German garrison was very weak.

The landing

Four companies of the 1st Battalion, King’s African Rifles, made up of African riflemen from Nyasaland, under Major L. M. Soames, with a machine-gun section and a company of the Indian 101st Grenadiers, were assigned to take the island. The whole force was commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel L. E. S. Ward. On 8 January the troops embarked at Mombasa on the auxiliary cruiser Kinfauns Castle. On the morning of 10 January the cruiser HMS Fox and Kinfauns Castle shelled the western tip of the island, Ras Kisimani, and the troops went ashore unopposed.

The island was defended by only three Germans, 15 askari policemen and 11 recruits under a reserve lieutenant, Schiller. They took up a position near the village of Ngombeni. On the morning of 11 January British scouts ran into them and the fighting began. Schiller fired from the branches of a mango tree, and his men defended themselves stubbornly for nearly four hours. Only an outflanking move forced them to retreat across an open valley, under machine-gun fire. The badly wounded Schiller and most of his men surrendered. Two defenders were killed and five wounded. A small group escaped by dhow to the mainland, to Kilwa. On the British side one askari was killed and seven were wounded. Three officers were also wounded, among them Major Soames himself.

A base against Königsberg

That same day the British flag was raised over the island’s main settlement, Kilindoni, and the German civil authorities surrendered the island. According to one account, Lieutenant Schiller’s wife dressed the wounds of British soldiers before her husband was found. On 13 January a company of Indian infantry took over the garrison of the island, and the askari of the King’s African Rifles sailed north, to the area of Jasin, where heavy fighting soon took place.

Mafia became the British forward base on the coast of the German colony. From there agents and scouts were sent ashore into the Rufiji delta. An airstrip for the aircraft of the Royal Naval Air Service was also laid out on the island. In July 1915 machines flying from it directed the fire of the two monitors that finally put Königsberg out of action.