1914 - Francis Braithwaite and the Battle of Tanga

Part One - The untimely demise of  Major Braithwaite

Francis Joseph Braithwaite was born in Great Waldingfield, Suffolk in 1872 where his father was rector.  He was the eldest son of the Reverend Francis Joseph Braithwaite and Mary [née Hopkinson], herself the daughter of a country parson.  Sheltered from the travails of village life he received his formative tuition from the family’s German governess before being sent off to finish his studies at Winchester College.  In 1906 he married Norah Rachel Burke, the daughter of Lieutenant Colonel Walter St George Burke late of the Royal Engineers and owner Auberies a sprawling estate a few miles away at Bulmer in Essex.[1]

Military Career

He was destined for a life in the military graduating from cadet school when he was eighteen.  In 1891 he received his commission as a Second Lieutenant and joined 2^nd Battalion, The Loyal North Lancashire Regiment.  Between 1893 and 1898 Braitwaite was posted to India, taking part in the Relief of Chitral on the North-West Frontier in 1895.  In 1900 he was sent to South Africa where he commanded a company of mounted infantry for the next two years, being Mentioned in Despatches and awarded both the Queen’s and the King’s South Africa Medals for his service during the Second Boer War.  By 1911 he was a man of proven ability under fire, and had risen to the rank of major, the battalion’s second in command.  After a brief period in Mauritius he was posted to India, first to Poona then Bangalore, where his regiment was stationed at the outbreak of World War One.

In October 1914 his battalion was ordered to British East Africa as part of Indian Expeditionary Force ‘B’, itself part of a larger plan to neutralise German overseas possessions in Africa.  On 3 November Braithwaite and his men landed without incident in the neighbouring German colony quickly securing the docks and wharves of Tanga seizing the Custom House and running up the Union Flag on top of the town’s principal hotel.  Disaster however was soon to strike when by noon of the following day the main assault to the east of the town stalled, before dissolving into an ignominious rout.  The 2^nd Battalion’s once dominant position on the seaward side of port now had to face hours of bitter street fighting from an ever increasing number of enemy troops, without any chance of relief.  It is unclear when and how Major Braithwaite actually met his end, he appears however to be the only British officer killed during this final phase of the action; he was certainly not among the survivors who surrendered en masse the following day.  When his body was exhumed at the end of the war, it was only possible to identify him by his gold fillings.  He was reburied in Tanga Memorial Cemetery in Dar-es-Salaam and is remembered on the Roll of Honour of Winchester College and in the parish church of St Lawrence in Great Waldingfield as well as on the Long Melford War Memorial.[2]

Legacy

Francis Joseph Braithwaite was survived by four children, his three sons all serving in the military; Francis Joseph St George Braithwaite OBE rising to the rank of Air Commodore in the RAF, Michael Robert to Lieutenant Colonel in the Royal Norfolk Regiment while his youngest son Thomas Layland Braithwaite was a lieutenant in the South African Air Force, sadly killed in action in 1941 during a sortie over Tobruk.     

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Part Two - Colonial Misadventure: The ill-fated Campaign against Tanga

While the armies of Germany and Britain and France were slowly approaching a stalemate on the Western Front by the winter of 1914, plans were being put in place to occupy and neutralize German colonies in Africa.  The first of these was to be launched against the port of Tanga in German East Africa, now in present day Tanzania. The port was thought to be a particularly easy target as it lay only 50 south of Britain’s East African colony, restyled Kenya in 1920.

Initially planned as a purely naval operation where Tanga would be bombarded into submission from the sea, this part of the campaign was dropped in favour of an amphibious landing by 8,000 troops of the Indian Expeditionary Force. One reason for this change of plan may have been on the one hand the inevitable loss of civilian lives and how this might play out in the world press, and on the other the possible destruction of the port and dock facilities which would be vital to the expansion of trade when the German colony was absorbed into Britain’s ever expanding Empire.

On the morning of 2 November 1914 and in the great tradition of British gunboat diplomacy, the cruiser HMS Fox anchored off the town and the ship's commander went ashore, giving Tanga one hour to surrender and haul down the German imperial flag.  After three hours and no sign of the Germans capitulating the warship sailed off to collect in the invasion force.  Erroneously told that the harbour and approaches had been mined the British spent the rest of that day and much of the following sweeping the area for non-existent mines.  This delay gave the Germans valuable time mobilize the town’s colonists and a hundred or so locally trained native troops (known as askaris) to strengthen and man defensive positions.  A telegraph had also been sent to the nearest garrison at Neu Moshi some two hundred miles away, for reinforcements; fortunately the town was on a direct rail line that terminated at the port.  Over the next two days the German position was bolstered by the addition of six more companies of Askaris, bringing the defence of Tanga up to a 1,000 men by the early afternoon of 4 November. 

The Battle

On 3 November the invasion force made unopposed landings at the harbour by a contingent made up of British regulars from 2^nd Battalion, The Loyal North Lancashire Regiment and Ghurkhas of the Kashmiri Rifles, while the bulk of the troops, all from the Indian Army, were put ashore three miles east of the town.

It was not until midday on 4 November that the British and Empire troops were ordered to begin their march on Tanga.  The harbour contingent of whom Major Brathwaite was a leading player made steady progress through the streets of the town, capturing the Custom House and the Kaiser Hotel. Meanwhile the other contingent advanced on the town through a mangrove swamp which not only slowed their progress but made them an easy target for the well concealed Askari troops.  The first unit to lose its resolve was the 63^rd Palamcottah Light Infantry which broke under the hail of bullets and turned tail and ran.  It was about this time that the incident that gave the battle its alternative name of the Battle of the Bees occurred when a soldier of the advancing 98^th Infantry stumble into a colony of wild bees.  The ensuing mayhem of men, not only under fire but at the same time trying to ward off the angry swarm also broke and started to fall back.  The other regiments to the rear seeing the confusion ahead of them also began to retreat.  At this point the German commander launched a bayonet attack on their flank and rear, turning the retreat into a rout.

In the sight of so much confusion the British commander ordered a general withdrawal back to the transport ships east of the town.  In his haste however he abandoned tons of equipment including 16 machine guns, hundreds of rifles and 600,000 rounds of ammunition.  In addition to his material losses more than 850 dead and wounded were left behind.  The Official History of the War records the Battle of Tanga as ‘one of the most notable failures in British military history.’  The colony of German East Africa did not formally surrender until the war in Europe was over.

 Research by David Gevaux, MA

Melford and the Great War Project

Sources

http://www.britishbattles.com/north-west-frontier-india/seige-relief-chitral.htm

http://www.loyalregiment.com/photo-identification/

http://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/tanga_battle_of

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Tanga

http://www.firstworldwar.com/battles/tanga.htm

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/battle-of-tanga-ends-in-defeat-for-british-colonial- troops

An in-depth analysis can also be found inm the thesis by Major Kenneth J. Harvey The Battle of Tanga, German East Africa 1914 (Fort Leavenworth, Kansas 2003) see http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/ fulltext/ u2/a416385.pdf

Notes

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[1] The Auberies was the former home of Mr & Mrs Andrews, the sitters for the eponymous painting by Thomas Gainsborough in 1750

[2] Service Record, Medal Index Card, Commonwealth War Graves Commission, and recorded in de Ruvigny's Roll of Honour 1914-18, Volume II, p.37. and in British Army, Bond of Sacrifice: Officers Died in the Great War 1914-1916 – Volume 1, p.46