http://ww1blog.osborneink.com/?p=8156SS Gwendolen (sometimes misspelled Guendolen and Gwendolyn) was a British steamship on Lake Nyasa[1] that fought in the first naval action of World War I against the German steamship Hermann von Wissman which it caught on a slipway at Sphinxhafen, now known as Liuli.
The 350-ton vessel was launched at Fort Johnston in 1899, and named after Lady Gwendolen Cecil, the then 29-year-old unmarried daughter of the Marquess of Salisbury. In 1907 the Gwendolen was the largest of three vessels formerly used as gunboats, the others being the SS Chauncy Maples and the Queen Victoria, with four civilian steamers on the lake.
From 1914 she was commanded by Captain Edmund Rhoades, who attacked the Hermann von Wissman, the vessel of his friend and former drinking partner Captain Berndt, by surprise, with Berndt having been unaware that war had started.[5] William Percival Johnson later recalled that Captain Berndt, who had been master of the German vessel for its original purpose as an anti-slavery gunboat in the 1890s, had been a good friend of the British missionaries in the days of Chauncy Maples.
In the 1920s the Nyasaland Government Marine Transport ran a monthly sailing of SS Gwendolen from Fort Johnston carrying goods and passengers on a 15-day round trip around various ports on the lake.
The story of the initial strategy of seizing German territories in Africa is an interesting one.In the early 20th century, Lake Nyasa lay on the border between German Tanganyika (today’s Tanzania) and British Malawi, and each empire maintained a small naval presence there. The British assigned the task to Commander Edmund Rhoades, in charge of the gunboat HMS Gwendolen. He shared the lake with a German Captain Berndt, in command of the SS Hermann von Wissman. In the decade preceding the war, Rhoades, in charge of the gunboat HMS Gwendolen. He shared the lake with a German Captain Berndt, in command of the SS Hermann von Wissman. In the decade preceding the war, Rhoades and Berndt became good friends, and boon drinking companions. When Britain declared war against Germany in 1914, Rhoades was first to receive the news, and decided to end the war in Lake Nyasa before it had even begun, without hurting his friend.
The German gunboat was docked for repairs, its captain still unaware that there was a war on, when Rhoades showed up in the Gwendolen, and disabled the Hermann von Wissman with a single volley. Captain Berndt leapt into a dinghy and had it rowed furiously to the Gwendolen, which he boarded while cursing out Rhoades and questioning his sobriety and sanity. Rhoades sat Berndt down, and over whiskey, explained the situation to his erstwhile boozing buddy. He then led away his livid prisoner of war, who by then was loudly cursing German officials and his chain of command for not keeping him up to speed on developments in Europe. Thus concluded WWI’s first naval engagement.
https://www.academia.edu/6626820/Behind ... =swp_share