British take Bismarckburg

On 8 June 1916 the column of Lieutenant-Colonel R. E. Murray took Bismarckburg, a German station on the south-eastern shore of Lake Tanganyika, today Kasanga in Tanzania, close to the border with Zambia. Together with Neu Langenburg it was one of the two main centres of German authority on the south-western borderland of German East Africa. From here a road led east to Neu Langenburg, and across the lake the Germans could maintain a steamer link with Kigoma. The British entered Bismarckburg without a fight, but to the disappointment of the command the garrison had managed to escape.

Murray, an officer of the British South Africa Company police, commanded the westernmost of the four columns of Brigadier-General Edward Northey which at the end of May had crossed the border from Nyasaland and Northern Rhodesia. His roughly 800 men, mainly policemen from Southern and Northern Rhodesia, set out on 23 May from Abercorn, today Mbala, and from 25 May besieged the German post at Namema. The British official history (Hordern) writes that the ring was too loose: during the night of 2 to 3 June the garrison slipped through gaps in the lines in small groups and made off to the north. Murray set off in pursuit and on 4 June reached Mwazye, about 50 kilometres further on. The fugitives were reportedly heading for Tabora, almost 500 kilometres away, so Murray judged the pursuit hopeless and turned west towards Bismarckburg, which lay about 70 kilometres from Mwazye.

Escape across the lake

On the way, on the Kalambo river, the column fought a minor skirmish. On the morning of 7 June Murray began to surround Bismarckburg. The garrison under Hasslacher resisted throughout the day. The British had 4 wounded, and Lieutenant E. L. Ingpen of the Northern Rhodesia Police died of wounds. One of the officers present remembered that Hasslacher rejected the summons to surrender but sent the British wounded supplies from his hospital. Murray was unable to close off access to the lake, and during the night of 7 to 8 June the Germans got away by boat. On the morning of 8 June his men occupied the abandoned station.

The escape could have been prevented by the British flotilla on the lake, the same one that in the winter had sunk the gunboat Hedwig von Wissmann. According to Hordern its boats reconnoitred Bismarckburg as early as dawn on 5 June, but saw little, fired two shells towards the station and sailed away. They came to the already captured town only on 9 June. Hordern attributes this to a lack of communications: Murray could not coordinate his actions with the sailors. The writer Giles Foden, author of a book about the Tanganyika expedition, presents the matter more sharply. According to him the flotilla’s commander, Lieutenant-Commander Geoffrey Spicer-Simson, saw a fortified fort by the harbour, gave up the idea of attacking and withdrew south to Kituta, which angered Murray. At Bismarckburg it was later said to have turned out that the fort’s guns were wooden dummies.

A prize without a victory

Northey was dissatisfied with this turn of events. As early as 4 June he had telegraphed Murray to pursue the enemy “with all his strength”, if necessary to leave behind his guns and his weakest men, to give the enemy no respite, and to send only a detachment to take Bismarckburg. On 7 and 8 June, in still more urgent telegrams, he reminded him that destroying the enemy mattered more than taking the station. Hordern supposes that these orders reached Murray only when he was already at Bismarckburg, and that the German garrison on his flank was in any case a threat he could not leave behind him.

Despite the disappointment, the results were clear. By the beginning of June the whole borderland from Lake Nyasa to Tanganyika had been cleared of Germans, and both their main centres, Bismarckburg and Neu Langenburg, were in British hands at small cost. On 11 June Northey called Murray’s column to Rungwe as a reserve for his three other columns, which were advancing north-east towards Iringa. Small garrisons were left at Bismarckburg and Namema. The order arrived three days later, and on 15 June Murray set off on a march of about 320 kilometres to the east.