Section of a 1906 map of German East Africa from Belgian Congo and Lake Tangayika to the west to the capital of Dar-es-Salaam on the Indian Ocean coast. The German colony faced the British colonies of British East Africa and Rhodesia to the north and southwest, Belgian Congo to the west, and Portuguese Mozambique to the south. From Andree's Allgemeiner Handatlas, published in Leipzig, Germany by Velhagen & Klasing.

Deutsch Ostafrica, Britische Besitzungen, Kongostaat, Portugiesische Besitzungen



German East Africa, British possessions, Congo Free State, Portuguese possessions

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East of Africa, south of the Middle East and Indian subcontinent, west of Australia and shipping lanes to the Pacific Ocean, the Indian Ocean was an active war zone in 1914. On October 30, Winston Churchill noted that there Britain sought Emden and Königsberg with eight ships, had eight on convoy duty, and additional ships protecting trade.

The German battleship Emden fled the German colony of Tsingtao, China on August 7, and raided Allied shipping in the Indian Ocean until being sunk by the Australian light cruiser Sydney on November 9.

Emden had cruised the Bay of Bengal, seizing and sinking all British-flagged vessels encountered including, in September, ten steamers, some of whose crews were sent to Calcutta. It seized a coal ship and brought its crew to Colombo. The same month, Emden shelled Madras, hitting its petroleum tanks, two of which burned with the loss of a half million gallons of oil.

In October, Emden seized or sank six more British ships and the Russian cruiser Zemcug. British losses amounted to over 20 million marks.

When war broke out, the light cruiser Königsberg was stationed in German East Africa. On August 6, it sank the English steamer City of Westminster at the Socotra Islands and, on September 20, the light cruiser Pegasus in Zanzibar Harbor.

By October 30 the British Admiralty had discovered Königsberg hiding in the Rufiji River in East Africa. Two comparable British ships prevented her return to sea. Königsberg was not sunk until July 1915, but it could not escape the Rufiji, and no longer threatened Allied shipping.

The German guerilla campaign under Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck received some supplies from ships along east Africa's Indian Ocean coast.

Indian Ocean is an ocean.