SMS Königsberg's Last Fight at Rufiji Delta

SMS Königsberg at Dar es Salaam

SMS Königsberg was the lead ship of her class of light cruisers built by the Imperial German Navy and was launched in December 1905. In April 1914 Fregattenkapitän Max Looff took command and the ship was sent on what was to have been a two-year deployment to German East Africa, but this was interrupted by the outbreak of World War I in August of that year.

Königsberg initially attempted to raid British and French commercial traffic in the region but  destroyed only one merchant ship in the course of her career. Coal shortages hampered her ability to attack shipping. On 20 September 1914 she surprised and sank the British cruiser HMS Pegasus in the Battle of Zanzibar. She then retreated into the Rufiji River to repair her engines.

The Trapped Königsberg Engaging the Monitors

During this time, the British reinforced the ships tasked with tracking down the elusive German raider and placed the ships under the command of Captain Sidney R. Drury-Lowe. On 19 October the cruiser Chatham found the German East Africa Line ship Präsident at Lindi. A boarding party searched the ship and discovered documents indicating she had supplied Königsberg with coal the previous month. On 30 October the cruiser Dartmouth located Königsberg and Somalia in the delta. Chatham, Dartmouth, and Weymouth blockaded the Rufiji Delta to ensure Königsberg could not escape. However, the shallow draft of the river also ensured that large Royal Naval ships could not get within firing range of the Königsberg.

Königsberg Scuttled

After several attempts to sink the ship including bringing in an obsolete battleship to attempt to reach the cruiser with longer range guns, the British sent two monitors, Mersey and Severn, to destroy the German cruiser. They were driven off, however, in a three-hour fight on 6 July. On the 11th, the two monitors got close enough to severely damage Königsberg, forcing her crew to scuttle the ship. The surviving crew salvaged all ten of her main guns and joined Lieutenant Colonel Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck's guerrilla campaign. The 10.5cm guns played especially prominent roles for the Germans for the rest of the war, acting as the theater's heaviest field artillery, used in harbor fortifications, and even remounted on the converted ferry Gützen, the German "capital ship" of the inland Lake Tanganyika fleet. The rusting remains of the wreck disappeared into the river bed in 1966.

Source: World Heritage Encyclopedia