MV Liemba
If ships could talk then the MV Liemba
would tell a story like no other. It has probably seen all faces the world
would assume bloody war, hope and peace in a life time that spans several
decades. It was earlier known as
the Graf von Götzen. Mv Liemba was buit
in 1913 at the Meyer- Werft Shipyard in Papenburg Germany.
It was named after the former Governor of German East Africa, Count Gustav Adolf Graf
von Gotzen. She was to serve as a passenger and cargo ferry in conjunction with
the East African Railway company. She was fully assembled in 19 14 at Kigoma on
Lake Tanganyika and was operational by 1915.
The Germans fully dominated
lake with the aid of the Gotzen, it was additionally armed with a 105 mm (4.1
in) autocannon. Other than ferrying cargo and personnel the ship acted as a
base to launch ambush attacks on the enemy and allied forces.
The British under the
command of Geoffrey Spicer-Simson and the Royal Navy brought two armed motor boats
from England via Belgian Congo to the western shore of Lake Tanganyika. The two
boats waited until Dec 1915, then mounted surprise attacks on the Germans,
capturing their gun boat – Kingani and Hedwig von Wissman was sunk on February
1916, leaving the Gotzen as the only German vessel remaining on the Lake.
With strengthened
positions on the Lake, the British and allied forces, (Belgians) bombed German
positions in and around Kigoma. The Belgians set up an airbase at the western
shores of the Lake and claim to have hit the Gotzen a claim that the Germans
denied. The German spirit suffered and consequently striped of her gun. Kigoma
was quickly being cut-off by the allied forces having cut-off the railway link
in July 1916. The German naval commander Gustav Zimmer ordered the Gotzen to be
dismantled to avoid it falling on enemy hands. This was to be done by three engineers’
who had travelled from Germany to assemble the ship. They saw the possibility
of salvaging the ship in future and they loaded the ship with sand and covered
all engines with a thick layer of grease before sinking her carefully on 26th
July off the mouth of the Malagarasi River.
The Gotzen would stay
submerged at the bottom of Lake Tanganyika until 1924 when the British Royal
Navy salvaged her to aid transport in the lake at their new protectorate of
Tanganyika. They found the engines and boilers were still usable and she
returned to service in May 1927 as a passenger and cargo ferry under the new title
MV Liemba. The Liemba would operate full time and non-stop from that date.
In 1997
the UNHCR used Liemba to transport more than 75,000 refugees, who had
fled Zaire during the First Congo War ,back
to their homeland following the overthrow of long time dictator Mobutu Sese
Seko.
So the
next time you visit this Magical land make a date with history have a glance or a ride on the MV Liemba.
