The Liemba

The Liemba at dawn

The trip was off to an auspicious beginning when the crew of the Liemba started playing the Titanic theme song shortly before we steamed our way out of the Kigoma harbor; although after twelve hours of Celine Dion, Westlife and what one friend calls "Tanzanian hip-bumping music," the sudden sinking of our ship was the least of my concerns.

I was excited about traveling on the Liemba because it is such an unlikely scrap of history. The Liemba (nee Graf von Gotzen) was Germany's secret weapon in the first naval battle of World War I - a battle which occurred, oddly enough, in Lake Tanganyika.

The battle over Lake Tanganyika was a fight for the strategic control over central Africa. In the book Mimi and TouTou Go Forth, Giles Foden explains that the Germans needed to maintain their control over German East Africa (now Tanzania) to ensure that they had a supply of boh cotton (previously imported from America and Britain) and exportable goods such as tobacco, tea and spices to generate revenue for their Imperial government and to fund its wars (not to mention the manpower they could ship to Europe to fight in the trenches for the Germans).

Hearing reports of a German steamer on the Lake (the reports were actually about a smaller vessel, called the Hedwig), the British sent two small armed motor boats (the HMS Mimi and HMS Toutou, French for "meow" and "woof-woof") to sink the Hedwig, which they did in a bay just north of Kigoma. But once the British troops saw the Liemba, it sounds like they tucked their tales and ran, and attempted to gain control of German East Africa by land instead.

If this theme sounds familiar to you, it's probably because you saw the film The African Queen. In the film, Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn wind their way down rivers to reach the lake, where they plan to sink a ship called the "Louisa" - a story based on the British hunt for the Hedwig, and their surprising discovery of the Liemba once they arrived. I have been told that the beautiful ship they find at the end of the film is in fact the Liemba herself, but it has been years since I have seen the film, so I cannot verify this.

In real life, the Liemba has sunk twice. First it was scuttled by the Germans in the mouth of the Malagarasi River after the Hedwig was sunk; they oiled-up the metal parts and hid the ship at the bottom of the lake, intending to reclaim it after they won the war.

The second sinking was an accident: it slipped under the currents while in port during a storm. Winston Churchill ordered that it be resurrected, and it has been operating ever since.

Today when people talk about the Liemba, they talk less about its ascent through the annals of history and more about the descent taken by passengers when disembarking the boat. Because the lake is so shallow near the shore, when the Liemba reaches most ports of call (with the exception of Kigoma and two other major cities with ports), it is simply parked in the lake where small wooden boats swarm its hatches and people jump in and out of boats, tossing luggage and parcels and children about, and bartering over the price to get back to land. It is a chaotic scene with the ship's horn serving as the starting pistol: people yell, push and jump from the Liemba into the smaller boats and from smaller boats into the Liemba. I watched anxiously at the first stop, knowing that the next morning it would be my turn to jump.

Any discomfort or anxiety I felt about my chosen method of travel quickly melted away as I enjoyed one of the most beautiful sunrises I have ever seen while clutching the Liemba's railing. As the National Parks boat I had boarded pulled away, I stared back at the Liemba, thinking about the incredible role she has played in history and all of the exciting battles and excursions she has made over the years; grateful to have been able to join her on one of her many voyages.

A fishing boat at sunrise - an incredible view from the Liemba