Kingani (ship)
 The Kingani (front right) on Lake Tanganyika with a gun raft.
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The Kingani was a steam-powered small coastal ship in the colony of German East Africa , named after the Kingani River in German East Africa.
history
Since it was not possible to control the coastal waters of German East Africa by sailing vehicles, the colonial department of the Foreign Office ordered two steam boiler-operated customs cruisers for the colony from the Josef Meyer shipyard in Papenburg . With the construction numbers 91 and 92, the two ships were completed in 1894 and named Wami and Kingani .
After their transfer to East Africa, they took up patrol duty. But also mail and passenger transport were part of their tasks. Passengers, mostly civil servants and employees, and mail were transported to and from Zanzibar . When the Maji Maji uprising broke out in August 1905 , the two customs cruisers were also used.
After the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914, the two ships were taken over by the Imperial Navy . The Kingani was taken apart in Dar es Salaam and loaded onto the Mittellandbahn , on which it was driven to Kigoma on Lake Tanganyika . In Kigoma the ship was rebuilt, equipped with a cannon and put back into service on November 10, 1914. The ship was then used for reconnaissance and supply trips on the second largest lake in Africa. There were always fighting with Belgian and British units.
In November 1914, the Kingani and Hedwig von Wissmann successfully attacked Kasakalawe in Northern Rhodesia . The aim of the company was to capture as much telegraph material as possible for use in German East Africa. The material was there for the construction of the British transcontinental telegraph line Cape Town - Cairo . In the attack on Kasakalawe, the English steamer Cecil Rhodes , which had been stranded there since 1903 after an accident, and the small English steamer Good News of Kingani size were also destroyed.
On December 26, 1915, the Kingani got into action with the British gunboats Mimi and Toutou . When the ship began to sink after several hits, the crew surrendered and the ship became British prey.
After the repair, the Kingani was put into service by the British in early 1916. Renamed Fifi in British service , she became a Royal Navy ship . The Fifi was used as a government steamer after the First World War and was used for the transport of passengers across Lake Tanganyika until it was sunk in 1924 as not being seaworthy. According to other information, the ship was still in service around 1930.
literature
- Siegfried Borgschulze: The customs cruisers “Wami” and “Kingani” in German East Africa , In: The Logbook - Journal for Shipbuilding History and Ship Modeling , Publisher: Arbeitskreis Historischer Schiffbau e. V. issue 4/1986, pp. 145ff.
- Erich Gröner , Dieter Jung, Martin Maass: The German warships 1815–1945, Vol. 7: Landing associations II: Landing vehicles in the narrow sense (Part 2), landing ferries, landing support vehicles, transporters; Ships and boats of the army, ships and boats of the Seeflieger / Luftwaffe, colonial vehicles , Bernard & Graefe Verlag, Koblenz 1990, ISBN 3-7637-4807-5 .
Web links
- Lothar Wischmeyer: The customs cruiser "Kingani" for DOA atarbeitskreis-historischer-schiffbau.de, accessed on March 18, 2019
Individual evidence
- ↑ Gröner, p. 220
- ^ Heinrich Schnee : German East Africa in World Wars , Verlag Quelle & Meyer, Leipzig 1920, p. 111.
- ^ Albert Röhr: German marine chronicle. Verlag Gerhard Stalling, Oldenburg / Hamburg 1974, ISBN 3-7979-1845-3 , p. 197.
- ^ Heinrich Schnee: German East Africa in World Wars , Verlag Quelle & Meyer, Leipzig 1920, p. 112.
- ↑ Gröner, p. 221