Jan van Eden
bio - biography Stories of our life in the foreign
1970 Travels from Zambia- History of the S.S.Liemba
In 1970 we travelled 5 days on the S.S.Liemba from Zambia to Burundi on
the Tanganika Lake. The history of this ship is fascinating.
History of the
Liemba taken from sites on the internet, e.g.
http://www.wikiwand.com/en/MV_Liemba
T H E
H I S T O R Y O F T H E L I E M B A
Originally called the Graf von Götzen, she was built in 1913 at the Meyer-Werft
Shipyard in Papenburg, Germany, and named after the former Governor of
German East Africa, Count Gustav Adolf Graf von Götzen.
She weighed 1,150 tons and measured 67m long and 10m wide. She was built to
carry 480 tons of cargo, 60 tons of coal and 10 tons of water.
Her 2-steam engines produced together 500 horsepower which allowed her to
travel at a speed of up to 10 nautical miles per hour.
Soon after being assembled, she was taken apart and packed into 5,000
watertight boxes and transported by railway from Papenburg to Hamburg
harbor. From Hamburg, the boxes were loaded onto several steam ships and
shipped through the Mediterranean Sea and the Suez-Canal, round the Horn of
Africa, down to Dar es Salaam. In Dar es Salaam the boxes were put onto the
new Central Railway Line to Kigoma. The railway tracks stopped 50km short of
Kigoma at that time, and so porters carried the 5,000 boxes the final 50km
to Kigoma. It took 13 months for 3-German engineers with Indian and African
workers to reassemble the Graf von Götzen. On the 5th February 1915, she was
released into the water and in the next few weeks all the other fittings
were done and the work was completed.
By May 2015 the First World War had reached Africa and the Graf von Götzen
was converted into a war vessel by fitting guns onto her deck and loading
her with other military equipment. After this conversion, and under the
command of Lieutenant Commander Gustav Zimmer, on the 19th June 1915 the Von
Götzen sank the smaller British steamer Cecil Rhodes near Mpulungu in
present day Mpulungu. In the next 10 days the Von Götzen enabled the German
fighters on Lake Tanganyika to beat their enemies and force them into their
own territory, managing to control the entire Lake for a whole year. During
that year the Von Götzen did patrols, ferried troops and supplies and
supported the German fortress at Kasanga (at that time known as
Bismarckburg).The Von Götzen was also used to launch surprise attacks on
Allied troops in Rhodesia and the Congo. It therefore became essential for
the Allied forces to gain control of Lake Tanganyika themselves. The Royal
Navy brought two armed motor boats, Mimi and Toutou, to the Lake from
England. These boats traveled via rail, road and finally river to Kalemie
(then called Albertville) on the western shore of Lake Tanganyika. The two
boats waited until December 1915, and mounted a surprise attack on the
Germans, capturing their gunboat, the Kingani. In February 1916 another
German vessel, the Hedwig, was sunk, leaving the Von Götzen as the only
German vessel remaining to control the Lake. As a result of their
strengthened position on Lake Tanganyika, the Allies started advancing
towards Kigoma by land, and the Belgians established an airbase on the
western shore at Albertville. It was from there, in June 1916, that they
launched a bombing raid on German positions in and around Kigoma. It is
unclear whether or not the Von Götzen was hit (the Belgians claimed to have
hit it but the Germans denied this), but German morale suffered and the ship
was subsequently stripped of its gun as it was needed elsewhere. A wooden
replica was installed on the Von Götzen to make it look like she was still
an armed vessel. The war on the Lake had reached a stalemate by this stage,
with both sides refusing to mount attacks. However, the war on land was
progressing, largely to the advantage of the Allies, who cut off the railway
link in July 1916 and threatened to isolate Kigoma completely. This led the
German commander, Gustav Zimmer, to abandon the town and head south. In
order to avoid his prize ship falling into Allied hands, Zimmer decided to
scuttle the Von Götzen. The most important parts of the machinery of the
ship were removed and hidden ashore. The remaining parts of the steam-engine
were greased to protect them from rusting, and the Von Götzen was loaded
with sand and carefully sunk at night in the mouth of the Malagarasi River
on the 26th July 1916. As the war progressed, and the Germans retreated from
Kigoma, the area came under control of the Belgians who quickly learned from
the local community what had happened to the Von Götzen. They found the ship
in the Malagarasi, and in the same year they were able to raise and tow her
back to Kigoma. Unfortunately she sank again in the bay of Kigoma due to a
storm. After the war, when Tanganyika was placed under British
administration, the Von Götzen was again raised on the 16th March 1924. She
had been under water for nearly 18 years. To everyone's surprise she was
still in unexpectedly good condition. The original parts of the ship's
engines which had been hidden ashore during the war, were found in good
condition and were once again installed in the ship. After 3-years of
restoration work the ship was put back into service on the 16th May 1927,
this time christened the S.S.Liemba (the name of Lake Tanganyika in the
language of the tribes around Kigoma). In 1948 the East African
Railways and Harbours Corporation (EAR&H) took over running the ferry,
allowing it to link services with the Central Line from
Kigoma to Dar es Salaam. During this period we travelled on the S.S. Liemba
from Zambia to Burundi, before the later conversion to diesel engines.
From 1974 till 1979 the ship was overhauled, with support from the World
Bank and various other development aid-programmes. At this time twin diesel
engines replaced the original steam engines. After renovating the ship, she
went back into service again and her name changed to the M.V. Liemba
(motor-vessel) as she was no longer powered by steam.In 1997, the Liemba was
used by the UNHCR, along with the MV Mwongozo, to transport more than 75,000
refugees, who had fled Zaire during the First Congolese War, back to their
homeland following the overthrow of longtime dictator Mobutu Sese Seko.
She was again used to repatriate Congolese refugees back to the DRC in 2013
and she has recently been used to repatriate refugees from Burundi to Kigoma
in May 2015.
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