Mimi and Toutou Go Forth by Giles Foden: book review

Mimi and Toutou Go Forth: The Bizarre Battle of Lake Tanganyika (2004) is about German East Africa in 1915 during Europe’s scramble for African colonization. German East Africa is now Tanzania, Rwanda, and Burundi.

In 1914, ‘’the Belgians … had a chance to attack German East Africa – if only they could cross Lake Tanganyika.’’ By 1915, the British decided to mount an attack to claim the land adjacent to their British East Africa (now Kenya and Uganda).

So while Winston Churchill was facing the Gallipoli campaign in Turkey, Geoffrey Basil Spicer-Simson, was commanded to lead the attack on German East Africa. Spicer (1876-1947) was born in Tasmania, Australia, and served in the British navy. He was described as ‘’peculiar’’ or ‘’downright dangerous’’ and he spoke in a ‘’curious manner.’’ This book is about the battle of Lake Tanganyika and whether Spicer was a hero or a lunatic.

His two gunboats were called HMS Mimi and HMS Toutou, and they sailed for 67 days from Great Britain to the coast of Africa, and then inland from Dar es Salaam to Lake Tanganyika to attack the German boats – in a land known for its ‘’tropical jungle, savanna bush, formidable mountains … blighted by malaria, the tsetse fly … and a thousand amoebic horrors that made a home of the human gut.’’ And also the jigger flea, the spirillum tick, the white ant, the scorpion, the poisonous spider, the wild bee, the warrior ant, the lion, and the rhinoceros.

On the first day in Lake Tanganyika Mimi and Toutou covered a distance of five miles, having hit sandbanks fourteen times. But they still had to prepare for battle. Spicer didn’t know that the German supership, the Graf von Gotzen was also in the lake – over five times the size of his little gunboats.

Spicer’s flamboyancy and idiosyncracies are well described, from the wearing of skirts in the tropical heat (he designed them and his wife made them) to his preference for monogrammed cigarettes. Spicer’s antics are reminiscent of another famous Tasmanian: the swashbuckling actor Errol Flynn.

Spicer’s battle was loosely immortalised in the C.S. Forester novel, The African Queen (1935), and movie produced by John Huston, starring Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn. Huston said he and Bogart escaped illnesses ‘’by always drinking Scotch with their water; Hepburn says they just drank Scotch.’’

Courtmartialled for wrecking his own ships, but also with multiple medals, was Spicer a foolhardy hero or a complete idiot? Was he a coward, a braggart, compulsive liar, or a fantasist? This is a humorously historical account of the Battle of Lake Tanganyika, and the man Lt. Commander Geoffrey Spicer-Simson, in all its incredible and unorthodox detail. A great tale, and true.

MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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