terious craft. She flew
the Red Cross and was tricked out as a hospital ship on one side, the
other painted grey. True, she had patients and a doctor on board when a
pinnace from one of our cruisers examined her, but she also had
machine-guns mounted and gun emplacements screwed to her deck, and all
the adaptations required for a commerce raider. So our admiral decided
that, after due notice, so suspicious a craft were better sunk. A few
shots flooded her compartments and she heeled over, burying the lying
Cross of Geneva beneath the waters of the harbour. Further up the creek
you will see the _Feldmarschall_ afloat and uninjured, save for the
engines that our naval party had destroyed, and ready, to our amazement,
at the capture of the town, to be towed to Durban and to carry British
freight to British ports, and maybe meet a destroying German submarine
upon the way. Further up still you will find the Governor's yacht and a
gunboat, sunk this time by the Germans; but easy to raise and to adapt
for our service. Strange that so methodical a people should have bungled
so badly the simple task of rendering a valuable ship useless for the
enemy. But they have blundered in the execution of their plans
everywhere. The attempt to obstruct the harbour mouth at Dar-es-Salaam
was typical of their naval ineptitude. Barely two hundred yards across
this bottle-neck, it should have been an easy job to block. So they sank
the floating dock in the southern portion of the channel and moored the
_Koenig_ by bow and stern hawsers, to the shores on either side in
position for sinking. Instead of flooding her they prepared an explosive
bomb and timed it to go off at the fall of the tide. But the bomb failed
to explode, and an ebb tide setting in, broke the stern moorings and
drove her sideways on the shore. Here she lies now and the channel is
still free to all our ships to come and go. We found, at the occupation,
the record of the court-martial on the German naval officer responsible
for the failure of the plan. He seems to have pleaded, with success, the
fact that his dynamite was fifteen years old. After that no further
attempt was made, and for nearly a year before we occupied the town our
naval whalers and small cruisers sailed, the white ensign proudly
flying, into the harbour to anchor and to watch the interned shipping.
It must have been a humiliating spectacle to the Hun; but he was
helpless. Woe betide him, if he placed a mine or t