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Geoffrey Spicer-Simson was a Commander in the Royal Navy. He served in the Mediterranean, Pacific and Home Fleets. He is most famous for his role as leader of a naval expedition to Lake Tanganyika in 1915, where he commanded two small ships which destroyed a superior German flotilla. His story was recently retold in a novel by Giles Foden called Mimi and Toutou Go Forth. The Bizarre Battle for Lake Tanganyika.

Contents 1 Early life 2 British Naval Expedition 3 Later life 4 Achievements 5 References

Geoffrey Basil Spicer Simson was born in Hobart, Tasmania, on 15 January 1876 as one of five children. Formerly in the merchant navy, his father Frederick Simson was a dealer in gold sovereigns in India who eventually settled in Le Havre, France, at the age of thirty-one. There he met eighteen-year-old Dora Spicer, daughter of a visiting English clergyman,* and on marrying changed his name to Spicer-Simson. In 1874 they moved to Tasmania, having some family there, and ran a sheep farm for five years. Geoffrey although born in Tasmania soon moved to France under his mothers wishes. He and his siblings were sent to schools in England. The eldest, Theodore, became an artist, moving between France and the United States. His youngest Brother, Noel, eventually joined the British army.

He entered the Royal Navy in 1889 at the age of fourteen. He served in the North Borneo Boundary Commission in 1901 and helped in the cnstructing of several maps and boundaries. He then went to China and made the first triangulated survey of the Yangtze River 1905-1908. After China, he was posted to Africa and from 1911-1914 he was the Director of a Survey of the Gambia River. His wife, whom he married in 1912, was Amy Elizabeth, daughter of Edmund and Phoebe Baynes-Reed of Victoria, British Columbia. After his posting in Africa he came to England and was given an office job in the Admiralty at the beginning of World War I. He was given the department in charge of the transfer of Merchant sailors to the War Navy.

As a result of his African experience Spicer-Simson was given command of an expedition to attack the German naval forces on Lake Tanganyika. His naval expedition, transported two motor-boats (armed with machine guns and cannons) overland from Cape Town, a distance of 3,000 miles through the Belgian Congo. The two boats, which he named Mimi and Tou-Tou were then launched on the Lake. Under his personal command he disabled the German Kingani and then captured it. It was repaired into British service as Fifi. He was promoted from Lieutenant Commander to Commander as being the first officer to capture a German ship in the First World War. According to the historian and writer Giles Foden he was noted as rather eccentric - for instance, he often wore a grass skirt whilst in command of his flotilla and insisted that an Admirals flag be flown outside his mud hut.

With the combined force of Mimi, Toutou, Fifi and two Belgian ships, Simson's flottila sank the Hedwig von Wissman. For this action, Commander Spicer Simson was awarded the D.S.O., but the expedition soon ended in controversy. He refused to send his ships to aid the British Colonial and Belgian Army force in the capture of Mpulungu in present day Zambia. After falling ill and retreating to his private quarters, he was sent to England for medical and mental recovery.

He was later Assistant Director of Naval Intelligence and a Naval Delegate and French Translator at the Versailles Peace Conference in 1919. In retirement he was involved in hydrographic work and his latter years were spent in British Columbia. He gave a serious of lectures on his command in Lake Tanganyika and helped co-write a National Geographic article on their transportation of the two boats through the jungle of the Congo. He died on 29 January 1947.

• China Medal in 1900
• He won the Distinguished Service Order in 1915
• The events of his flotilla at Lake Tanganyika inspired the novel and film The African Queen.

• 'Who's who' (1943), London: A. and C. Black; Creagh, Sir O'Moore and Humphris, E.M. (1978), 'The Distinguished Service Order, 1886-1923', London: J. B. Hayward.
• Shankland, Peter (1968), 'The phantom flotilla', London: Collins.