Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 221 - The Battle of Lake Tanganyika Part 2: Nelson of the Lake

Episode Date: August 15, 2022

Spicer Simson rides into some of the dumbest combat of all time, somehow wins. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys Sources: Giles Foden. Mimi and Toutou Go Forth Edward Paice. Tip and Run. The Untold Tragedy of the Great War in Africa

hello and welcome back to the lines of my donkeys podcast i'm joe and with me on this boat called the the Wow SS Depression SS if you like what we do here right after we talk about some of the most horrific crimes against humanity ever documented well that may be true Liam that is not what we're doing today

thankfully I like it's so funny to me because, you know, people, like, I tell people, like, I record podcasts. You know, I do have a nine to five, but I record podcasts. And they're like, oh, that's so cool. Like, yeah, I can't wait to listen. And I'm like, slow your fucking roll, bud.

Man, it's really interesting to me because like for what i never intended the show to turn into this but like you know when you're talking about history yeah it's gonna turn genocide a lot as it turns out yeah it's a thing and fuck shit with boats and fuck shit up with boats um like people are like what do you know what's your podcast about i just say military history because they're immediately turned off by that yeah i say military history um you know uh but my favorite thing is occasionally like someone will you know uh someone like i i've had to explain my i've had to because like we don't do ads oh there's your problem i don't do ads on There's Your Problem

and I don't do ads on 10,000 Losses nor will we ever except that one time where we didn't add for a friend we might do an ad on 10,000 Losses I don't have many morals about that fair enough it's a sports podcast man it's going to be an ad for Barstool Sports it's not going to be an ad for Barstool Sports.

It's not going to be an ad for Barstool Sports. I will be dead in the ground before I give Dave Fortnoy anything. Hi, I'm Liam from 10,000 Losses and when I'm getting ready to podcast, I put on a nice, refreshing pot of Black Rifle coffee. If Black Rifle reached out, I'd probably do it for the bit i'm not gonna lie to you i had to sit through what was it range 15 you know oh yeah you made me do that i'm so mad i'm so fucking mad at francis i'm not really i love francis but i tried to get him on the episode he was like no absolutely not i'm never gonna watch that movie and i was like okay fine um and then he had me go on uh hell of a way to die go listen to hell of a way to die

uh and we watched the boondock saints and we're gonna have to list we're gonna have to watch the second one which in my opinion is actually worse than range 15 it's not very good yeah i don't know it fucking asshole i'm calling you out francis i hope you listen to this uh i uh i did someone was asking me to describe well there's your problem to uh they were like uh yeah do you like describe it in like just a few words and i was like yeah it's a leftist engineering disaster podcast with slides and jokes they're like what i'm like yeah and it makes a shit ton of money thanks podcasts are kind of like new here uh like for instance i'm friends with the guy who literally made the first podcast here that's cool as shit though yeah yeah yeah he's

great um he actually might be editing this i don't know but um it so like people like ask me for uh like podcast recommendations i'm like going down the rolodex of podcasts i listen to like first one is like knowledge fight which is like 99 of laughing at alex jones like okay i cannot recommend that right um my like my segment like trash future british politics can't recommend that uh hell of a way to die about being like uh like weird uh mostly american veteran news and stuff can't recommend that uh like i like uh last podcast of the left definitely not going to recommend that to you guys like it's like uh uh well there's your problem. I can't recommend that either. Why?

Is it because of all the jokes about cum? I don't think it would hit the same. It might be the things about cum. I mean, to be fair, we're not that popular in Armenia either, and I live here. So speaking of things not popular in armenia boy boats yeah fair enough uh if that joke doesn't land look at a map um so oh if it doesn't land i'm gonna claim that i did that on purpose when we left you last time the self-appointed rear admiral jeffrey basil spicer simpson and his crew of drunks race car drivers and one chimp named

josephine i forgot r.i.p yeah god bless josephine man don't r.i.p josephine josephine's fine just don't don't put that don't put that on me josephine is alive at this point now today she probably is not joe uh we don't know that she could have become one of the elder gods we're not sure uh and you know what i'm actually going to preface this since we've already talked about how the show is super depressing yeah the only people that die in this episode are german oh good um i'll let you be the judge if that's a good figure yeah that's a good thing. And certainly not Josephine. I'm nuanced. Josephine and her crew.

I'm going to go ahead and say Josephine's in charge here. Our merry band of morons. Yeah, that's the way to look at it, right? This isn't a military mission as much as if you were to make a movie or or a novel for that instance for that matter like and like we have to make the most the weirdest crew of people that could possibly never actually be on a naval mission right um and and we're gonna put them on a naval mission it's like mikhail's navy yeah it's like mikhail's navy but World War I. But it actually happened. That's the fun part. They dragged their two motorboats thousands of miles through Africa to fight a pointless battle over a lake.

And by the end of last episode, they had finally found the Germans. Oh, good. Yeah. It had only been several months. And somehow nobody's dead yet uh that was one of the more astonishing things uh i've i i found while researching this is while fitz corral doing a navy through the african jungle none of the crew were accidentally like crushed to death genuinely impressive considering just how whack doodle fuck nuts bad this should be going. Even like, even even

low, someone's going to die of malaria or something, right? Or they're going to get clapped by dengue or something. Part of the course would be to get clapped by malaria. You would expect that. It turns out, being on the mission where you have to like drag hundreds of pounds of boat up a mountain

was like the best place to be in world war one because when you think about like the other option especially the uh this the the scottish guys who uh who joined the other option is like being on the western front oh that's true yeah that that is whatever i'll just take the boat up the hell like it sucks but it sucks within like sort of nor like the normal confines of understanding rather than just being fed into a wood chipper for 15 hours a day. Wait, you're saying that dragging this boat up a mountain...

Is preferable to Verdun? Yes. Yeah, my odds of survival are better here. Strap me up to that boat, motherfucker. Now, when I say that they found the Germans, I don't mean any official member of the 28 man crew,

uh, 29 counting Josephine. Um, yeah. Or sweet, sweet, sweet angel. Um,

it was actually, they were all actually, uh, like sleeping or, or, um, Spicer was having tea. Uh,

cause of course he was, uh, in his own officer built hut. Uh, but it was, uh, because of course he was, in his own officer-built hut. But it was a crewman named Tubby's African servant. Now, that is the term used for them. Their name's Marapandi. But I don't know if the term slave is fitting here, because they couldn't legally have slaves.

They were sure. Yeah, I think it's more of a ballet situation. Like it was his it was his African manservant or something. We will not be asking answering any more questions now. Moving on. Yeah, I'm going to say either way. Tubby's probably an asshole. Yeah, I think that's probably I think you're pretty much beyond reproach in saying that.

Yeah. Now, Mara Pondy was left on watch, despite the fact, again, he was a guy who served tea and fixed his uniform and had no military training whatsoever. But he managed to spot the German paddle steamer, the Kangani. whatsoever but he managed to spot the german paddle steamer the kingani uh it was now i most of these aren't actually warships like i need to underline that again pretty much everything is

like for instance the kingani is like a customs ship from germany east africa that they just this is the shit they stole right yeah well this one is uh... The Germans didn't steal it. This was theirs. Oh, I'm sorry. I thought that was British. My bad. But it was like... Well, we have this boat for customs inspection. Let's put a six-pounder can in it.

Why not, you know? Yeah, and most of these aren't warships, which makes everything that's about to happen even more ridiculous, including... I'm going to use the term high-speed chase relatively here. Because none of these things are going very fast. But, like, there's, like, a high-speed motorboat paddle steamer battle. Jesus Christ.

Yeah. Yeah. It's, like, this is if, like, two swan boats got machine guns strapped on them. War is hell, but at least it's also pretty funny. Sometimes. War is hell. It's least it's also pretty funny. Sometimes. War is hell. It's also incredibly stupid. Oh, yeah.

Like, inconceivably so, we should say. Now, when the Kingani pulled up, the only reason that Spicer's men and their hut didn't get bombed is because the Belgian ship, and I swear to god this is its name the dick's ton dick's time hold up now is there a possibility that this is a francophone pronunciation yes is it almost certain that i'm doing this because it's written dick's ton yes uh when you don't look at dick's ton directly in the mouth so yeah now one-eyed uh they pulled up alongside the uh the british camp and uh the germans scampered off decided they didn't want

none of that dick's ton dick's ton smoke the german ship pulled away uh now it was decided they would have to rush and build a harbor uh in the same camp area uh because so far the the mimi and the toto were on these like yes i forgot about the baby how could you possibly forget about the the the champion mimi and and the second toto um they were like in these weird box frame things uh and they were pulled up on shore uh none of their weapons were mounted um and which if you remember all the way back to the the beginning of the first episode that was kind of the point that they'd be able to move so quickly they'd just be able to like drop them into the lake like i'm like a bathtub toy and just take off

um but they'd actually been so badly damaged during the transit that they realized they wouldn't be able to do that um and they had to pull them ashore so they they needed a harbor like a small harbor mind you these are fucking 40 foot motorboats and exactly a warship um so they could float them uh refit them arm them and and repair them so we must repair them the pride of the British Navy here yes yes remember this is

the era of the dreadnought and arguably the most important British naval victory of World War 1 is going to be done here I love it. Now I say important because the Battle of Jutland meant nothing.

This means nothing, man. Fair enough. But it meant more than Jutland. We're talking low bar here. Now there was actually something of a natural harbor not that far away and the Belgians were like, why don't you just do it there? And Spicer was like, no, we're going to do things by the way. I'm taking my toys back.

And importantly, he was actually in charge of all allied forces on the lake. So the Belgians couldn't actually just be like, you're a fucking idiot. Go down there. They had to listen to him. The D however the dicks ton so yeah uh at this point the germans didn't see the mimi and toto um but they did see this like camp so like they knew something was up um however building this harbor that Spicer wanted meant that the crew and dozens of local laborers, mostly holo-holo tribesmen, these aren't slaves,

these are actually free tribesmen, they pay for labor. I don't know why it's an important distinction. I guess this makes them one step up above the Belgians. Whoa, low bar, baby. Welcome to the low bar olympics yeah yeah that that is that is the the the subtitle for this this podcast this low bars all around um now one of the problems with working in a deep lake in uh in the great lakes region of africa is would you guess

crocodiles and shit don't fuck with crocodiles man yeah don't don't fuck with crocs uh well there's crocs everywhere yeah so i don't follow don't like crocodiles all like alligators i'm not fucking trusting anything unchanged since the kt extinction dude not for liam stay the fuck out of the everglades you cannot make me go to the everglades uh so question from the leg. How much money do we have to pay to fist fight an alligator? Eight bucks. Whatever two, four locos cost.

I think with inflation, eight bucks. Inflation's a motherfucker. The loco inflation. It's tough out there, you know? It's tough out there for a guy who makes a living fist fighting alligators um i would much rather like obviously alligators are are better choice than crocodiles but uh um there's crocodiles all over this lake and people know it they're terrified and working on this harbor meant that

they had to be up like waist had to be up like waist high and walk no dude which would they might as well just hang fucking meat from their belts exactly and when people were like that's don't want to do this boss yeah but a file an OSHA complaint we're gonna we're gonna conduct a wildcat strike

of the fucking crocodiles Spicer of course told them to to shut up you know the belgians actually until morale improves the beatings will continue until the crocodiles are fed um now that the belgians did despite being horribly evil uh actually knew a little bit about dealing with crocodiles because they live there oh i figured they probably enslaved them or something i don't't know. They also have crocodile slaves. I hate Belgians, man. Little known fact about King Leopold II

is his large retinue of crocodile slaves. Ah. You know, I guess points for innovation, I suppose. Doesn't feel good saying that, by the way. Now, King Leopold, why is it that you enslaved crocodiles? They can't possibly be good for anything. Well, you see, it's the principle of the thing. Right.

That's what I say. They kind of knew an idea, which was if you throw dynamite into the lake, it scares off the crocodiles. That's sound reasoning at least. If you went to the University of Acme crocodile

control... I did. Thank you, Professor Wiley Coyote. How should we get rid of the crocodiles? Oh, you see, you simply yeet dynamite into the same water where your men are working. Tell them to duck.

To be fair, it's not like there's frag or shrapnel in the dynamite that they're throwing in. Other than probably being slightly deafened and terrified the men are fine as they work on the harbor as the water explodes around I don't like this I don't like it when my construction sites are like a scene

out of apocalypse now you see this is remember when we did an episode on the the charge of the light brigade and we had Roz on and he just kept talking about uh striking in the logistics area see this is exactly what he would do you know i just i

you know i don't know man i'm just like i don't like the idea of like hey go build this thing or whatever and then they and then what i have to do is fucking duck dynamite as i'm doing it yeah i mean building a harbor and a lake isn't hard enough you're gonna spice it up a bit by just like kobe brianning uh sticks of dynamite over your head sucks so much now uh remember i was talking about the tribesmen that were helping build um uh the harbor and everything else um they were german spies now not officially good honestly good actually it gets better than this they weren't officially german spies they spied on the belgians the british and the germans they were they were in business for themselves highest bitter shit yeah yeah yeah

yeah yeah yeah um now they were more of a wild card but it really seems like they didn't actually like the germans all that much. Nobody does. Good one. I think it's because the British treated them better than the Germans, and they also fucking hated the Belgians for obvious reasons. Yeah, it couldn't be the generations of the unspeakable horror. It's probably the unspeakable horror, honestly. Yeah, it might be the unspeakable horror now that you mention it. But the Spicer was for all

of spicer's flaws he was pretty nice uh to the locals uh he gave them food water and like booze tea stuff like that um so like he kind of right exactly yeah he didn't exactly win them over, but they were telling him a lot of stuff. So using these spies, word eventually got back to the German lake commander, Gustav Zimmer, that something was going on over there. And so he wanted to get a closer look and see exactly what the tribesmen were talking about however when this time when zimmer aboard the king ghani floated up in the middle of the night the belgians actually opened fire on them and they and they scampered off again after that the germans stayed back way war of just like bullshit nonsense disappointment yeah this war is like the battle is completely pointless and i feel like everybody involved kind of knows, other than

the Germans. Because the Germans are really pressing here. I have a hard time thinking, especially when we finish... For blood to fatherland, I say, for my kids to know, which is rapidly being eaten by alligators and crocodiles. Like, I have a hard time thinking that even though

Spicer's kind of a nutbag, that he would have really pressed the offensive when he was done. Oh, he was busy drinking tea, dude. Yeah, he's just hanging out with Josephine. Watching his boat sink. Drinking tea, watching the classic British sports

of throwing dynamite at crocodiles. Now, after that, the Germans stayed back. Not really wanting to attack any force for some reason like nobody's sure why because they have an opening here the Dick's Tun is there of course

but like the Germans slurping it up that sweet crocodile juice and like the Germans have three war ships for war on the lakes for war i won't call them i won't call them warships a customs boat yeah i think this is the the boat version of a technical

because it's like they're all like weird like riverine paddle boats with guns on them um but they they don't attack nobody's sure why uh now eventually they're afraid of josephine they saw josephine just flexing on a cliffside like we're going to stay away from that shit wrapped around a stick of dynamite to add a crocodile to assert dominance of the species yeah that's right as you do of course and now around the end of december the harbor was done and the mimi and toto were finally launched everything was attached uh they got loaded up and made ready for combat and they even test fire their cannons because if you remember the first time they did they flew off like yep like a cartoon uh this time that didn't happen you gotta stop going to the acme school of

engineering yeah it's it sucks they have they have free admission so a lot of people end up attending um now the reason for the scouting missions um and kind of apprehension probably wasn't because of the mimi and the toto um now there were rumors that the belgians were building an actual armored warship called the Barandani that would have fucked them up. Who was supposed to be building this? The Germans or the Belgians?

The Belgians. Because there is a little bit of truth behind this. They had tried. They had done the same thing that the Germans had done, which is ship a ton of of pieces over land we're gonna like put it together yeah yeah yeah yeah um but instead of having sick ground effects or whatever like it just kind of rusted uh they never built that stuff um i gotta i gotta tell you the phrase belgian warship does not exactly strike fear into my heart

it definitely does not know uh but you know it does strike fear into my heart. It definitely does not, no. But you know what does strike fear into the heart of every man? Dynamite crocodiles? What if the Fast and the Furious built warships? I'll watch that movie. That's 100% better of what

they're on like 10 now. It's just like these movies used to be slapping off the side of them. Now they're on like 10 now it's just like these movies used to be slapping off the side of them now they're about family actually I don't know what they're about I know they like absorb every action star that's

in the world at any given time like the Expendables but not ironic I don't think I've ever seen a Fast and the Furious movie to be honest with you I have seen the first three I've seen the first one which is fine the second one which is notably bad and the third one which I think is

Tokyo Drift which is terrible because it's just about a man discovering his new fetish I don't know it was definitely pitched by like a guy who was into toonami or something i don't i don't like the idea of being into toonami thank you uh now another thing that reinforced this uh idea that they were trying to build an actual warship is that remember how spicer is calling himself a rear admiral

yeah he had a flag too because of course he did right like of course he would have a rear admiral flag and he was flying it from his camp this fucking guy man well he inadvertently kind of owned the Germans here

because the Germans floated up like oh fuck a rear admiral flag that must mean like the british is coming yeah um because there's no reason that a rear admiral be commanding say two small motorboats but they're fearsome motorboats that's the detail yeah uh like in comparison the german commanders are all captains rather than admirals. He must be in charge of something serious. Yeah.

Whoops. Good job, morons. Spicer's own lunacy helped to defeat the Germans, which is kind of impressive. Do you know what a semaphore is? Yes. Naval code flag. Yeah. kind of impressive um so okay do you know what a semaphore is yes okay naval code flags yeah yeah uh okay um so i'm not a ship guy and so maybe some people like myself uh listening are not ship

people uh ship centaurs if you will half man half ship no that's kind of arousing to me actually uh so uh for people who don't know, a semaphore in regards to ships can be signaling in general. It can be with flags, lights, reflective mirrors, whatever, in order to pass a message using a special alphabet or Morse code,

depending on what system you happen to be using. Now, knowing how to do this or send and receive a semaphore is considered a pretty basic skill for a naval officer um and for enlisted men they've like signalmen that's their whole job yes now when the boats were out on the water doing tests spicer kept trying to send a signal to what the other boat trying to give them orders but uh he got mad when the other boat wasn't listening to them um when he got back to shore the signalman on the other boat would name tasker asked what exactly

spicer was trying to send him because it didn't make any sense sure so quickly became apparent that spicer had no idea how to how to use this yeah buddy ah captain moron rides again so rather than do something to fix this they like learn how to do it he probably learned how to do it naval academy whatever just forgot because he's old he's older than shit uh he's he's the oldest guy in the crew yeah are you forgetting this guy like had bit like had been in the name like was a legitimate naval guy just yeah yeah he's been in the navy like 10 years or longer never got promoted uh nope um now so like rather than like i don't know brush up on some signal books or something it's the children who are wrong it's it's the signalman that is incorrect uh he he ordered tasker to never remember his tasker's the signalman that is incorrect he ordered

Tasker to never remember Tasker's the signalman to never get on one of his boats again so that meant he now had two boats with no signalman that's right I might be wrong but if there isn't a signalman on the other boat nobody can tell me that I'm wrong

4D chess baby that's sound logic i guess i don't know what you call that really it's spicer logic you love to see it you're kind of confused to see it really you don't really know what you're seeing because you can't understand a semaphore we're all god's children of the dark i guess so on boxing day uh after christmas for those of you who don't know yeah yeah um for for those who are i where is boxing day is british canadian i assume australia and new zealand countries commonwealth in that case the day after christmas i don't recognize the commonwealth the Commonwealth's right to exist.

The Kingani slowly put it away from the British camp. Because remember, paddle boats. Guys making the putt noise. Nobody's here is moving very fast. Need for speed, this is not. And as he pulled away, Spicer saw an opening. It was time for his two glorious warships, the tiny motorboats, the Toto and the Mimi, to go to war.

Now, this is actually a problem for the Germans. Remember, they have a paddle steamer. Right. And the Mimi and toto are much smaller and have like outboard motors right um you know which are incredibly unreliable but much faster and like the kingani is a steamship so like when it's being chased like for people unaware how a steamship works they have to take time to like shovel more shit into the burner to build up steam to be able to go faster literally feces joe it's cold it's shit it's shit they rent it's shit shit it's a it's it's a it's it's doing biomass stuff don't worry about yeah

exactly like the german empire was it was very uh eco-conscious i mean hitler passed anti-smoking legislation. Yeah, he loved animals. He did love animals. The Kaiser decidedly did not. I don't know. Shovel a Kaiser in there too, just to be safe. What I'm saying is anti-smoking legislation is tyranny, actually. I like to point that out to Karim whenever she gets too feisty about

nicotine. Just like, you know who else wanted to ban it? Hitler. They recently recently this year 2022 in case whatever year you're listening to this passed a smoking ban indoors in Armenia finally and I have to say it's quite nice

yeah fair enough now so the Kangani had to build up steam to try to get away from these two tiny boats that were quickly ripping towards it just the image makes me so happy it's it's like the the t-rex versus the velociraptor uh from like jurassic park except everybody's even dumber um and like oh shit we have to buy time right so the captain of the kingani orders like them to open fire uh at the two ships only to realize that the motorboats move faster than the gunner can aim and fire yeah um now the mimi's gun wouldn't fire as far

and totos for that matter couldn't fire as far as the Kingani so this is where things get kind of cartoonish Spicer wearing a dress and having one of those cigarette holders clenched between his teeth like the goddamn penguin ordered his tiny boat to charge

the Germans to close the distance and the whole time he's like standing at the peak like he's the king of the world oh bastard commander shit yeah yeah yeah yeah unfortunately this is when the the crew of the mimi um learned that it's really fucking hard to aim a cannon on a motorboat that's going full bore across the lake because it's just all right bouncing up and down um for anybody who's never been on like a shitty fishing boat and tearing off across a decent size like you get the shit knocked out of you by waves um so like he couldn't aim the the gun

however after several tries they did hit the kingani um like they were they were firing like going wildly over uh i think it took like four shots to actually hit it but somehow this one shot was all it took because it was such a good shot it slammed directly into the deck gun blew through the gunner shield which that just so happened to be where the entire command team of the ship was standing and all of them got annihilated kill zone you know the unreal tournament multi-kill i need to get that as a drop the the shell hit the shield and like the captain his second command and his third in command

got got we're all immediately killed uh the the ship's entire chain of command was evaporated on accident i gotta tell you it's pretty fucking embarrassing to lose to whatever the meow is get your ass kicked by a boat named meow basically getting your ass kicked by a boat named Meow, basically. Getting your ass kicked by a boat named the Mimi, which is being captained by the British Penguin. Good news, though. The ship had a mascot, which was a goat, and was standing right next to the deck gun, completely unharmed.

Actually became fast friends with Josephine. Actually, hold on to that thought uh oh boy oh no the last surviving member of uh the last surviving officer aboard the kingani was an engineer suddenly now in command exactly uh and he was like he was below deck get it trying to build up steam so they get the fuck away and someone ran down to like everyone's dead you're in charge he's like oh man and he immediately ran up a white flag so he surrendered the boat uh the crew the ship itself and everything on board was captured nobody made any attempts to uh to to scuttle the ship at all um and for some horrific reason uh when the crew of the Mimi of the Toto, I can't remember which, climbed aboard the Kingani, they began scooping up the blood and the brain matter of the German command team that had just been blasted for souvenirs.

All right. Whatever. Whatever. Fucking. You know what, man? Whatever. What's a pretty fucking country in history man we've talked about souvenir keeping on a couple occasions i don't i think this might

be the first time anybody's ever like greedily scooped up blood um yeah that's good that's good eating what are you gonna put are they carrying jars with them maybe it's like a necklace situation it's all like that yeah it's not good um oh and they they kept the goat the goat was for became friends um somewhat miraculously stemming from the battle the kongani had barely been damaged okay because i guess one direct hit yeah but the rest of the shit was more or less fine right yeah they had they had to replace the gun with one that the belgians had laying around like an extra one um and uh the the surrounding damage from the exploding gun ammo that was up there with them but it wasn't very

bad oh sure which actually meant they had damaged their own boats more previously just trying to use them than the german had by shooting at it um well done boys then spicer renamed the king ghani the hms fifi at some point you gotta just sort of applaud him right like he's leaning into it you gotta respect him yes he's just he's just like i don't want to be here you don't want to be here like uh interesting note i was trying to see like what Fifi meant he claims that Mimitoto means like woof or bow wow and meow

the only thing I could find was Fifi is a prison term for pocket pussy I don't alright whatever man we're doing weird like cardboard boat races with machine guns on a fucking lake that doesn't matter

hell yeah bro i mean he now actually has a real boat and his fleet would grow um because why the belgians gifted him the alexander del don't say gift don't say gifted gifted gave gifted we had a no stop it we had a fucking verb already you're a writer they gifted it together it was a gift stop that i hate that so fucking much dude i cannot tolerate that shit for the i honestly cannot tolerate that shit it was already fucking had to work it's a boxing day gave it they gave it they gave it we had the verb already it's's gave. Gifted. Gifted is stupid. I fucking hate that so much. Who started saying... I fucking hate that shit.

I honestly fucking hate that shit. That's what word I'm gonna use more often. Yeah, I fucking know, dude. Where's Nick? He's dead. I killed him. Harvest him for meat. That's sweet, succulent nick meat that's why i sent him to korea first to get fattened up on bagogi so i could harvest them

yeah that's that's not crazy to me now uh this ship was called the alexander day commune uh which was uh actually previously sank uh they refloated it and repaired it and then gave it to them, which meant like it wasn't much of a gift. They did what? Thank you. It wasn't much of a gift because it was already previously like,

hey, my man, I get a boat for you. Only sank once. You want it? No, I really don't. But my friend, for you, excellent value. For you, for you, free value. For you, free. It's free. The Belgians also gave them

a speedboat called the Netta. And then for some reason, the Del Camino is renamed the HMS Vanguer, which I think just means vengeance. Sure. And I know my friend's pronunciations are perfect. You guys don't have to keep telling

me i know they're great spicer was also officially finally promoted to commander rather than just acting commander but he remember he was still calling himself a rear admiral so that's kind of a demotion for him i don't know why he went with rear admiral you've already lied your way up like six ranks you might as well go all the way i'm the first lord of the admiralty out here in this fucking lake why the hell not damn um of course he also took credit for um taking the shot that

killed the entire german command team and it wasn't him um you know what i did i did it without semaphore too all my losses was lessons it was his gunner that did it um and uh but he he whenever he tells these stories because remember the guy we're talking about here he does everything he does all the important stuff right right but yeah uh which of course makes his crew hate him even worse

because remember everybody also hates him the only thing that stopped the germans from going out and looking for this missing ship because like you know the king ghani just never came back one day um was the coming of winter um and even the the region uh and it was only a lake i know uh gets really bad weather so over the winter waves get bad rain um lake effect stuff yeah lake conditions are bad and and lake tanganyika is big enough or that's a fucking problem where it matters yeah um like for instance in the great lakes in the united states the weather gets fucking awful especially like superior which eats ships all the time maybe not as much anymore but this is certainly used to uh rock of the heaven fit of the evidence never forget uh

didn't you have to sing that yeah all the time um which in retrospect is kind of fucked up yeah what can i say gordon lightfoot has some bangers um yeah unequivocally yes it's gonna be the fucking intro to this episode and nobody's have any idea what we're talking about for like an hour to be great um but it also brought flooding um because you know too much uh rain and no if like flood infrastructure whatever um and uh also it's noted uh that it was just swarms of flies which i just bugs me to no end. I fucking hate flies. I hate mosquitoes, but I hate flies.

Yeah. Same. So all of these guys were, uh, we're just like laying around in their, in their lake front huts, just being savaged by flies. Um,

Oh, and one of the, um, the floods almost completely took the Toto, uh, like from the Harbor, uh, and they were able to,

to save it. Uh, finally in mid January, the H hedwig von wiesman hedwig von wiesman uh the german steamboat uh under the command of jobe aldebrecht ventured out to find out hey whatever fucking happened to the king ghani which is kind of funny to me because it's been well over a month um it's like you're in the lake my man where could it have gone there's two places it goes back to you or the floor of the lake um unless of course there be british um and they didn't uh like aldebaran didn't actually know that because nobody had confirmed it yet they thought that they were Belgians who they knew were around the lake because they've been fighting them for a while but anyway he uh he floated up to the the British

camp there immediately saw something that like strikingly liked the Kingani because you know they captured and renamed it there's always so many boatsani because they captured it and renamed it There's always so many boats, man. Because they captured it and renamed it Prison Pocket Pussy. And right as this was happening, Spicer ordered the Vanguier, the Mimi and the Fifi to attack him all at once.

Toto was sidelined due to damage. At this point, Odebrecht bailed the fuck out uh not wanting to deal with this shit now they kept the the the chase up the fifi couldn't keep up uh due to being you know much much bigger which was originally the problem in the first place uh but uh the mimi uh kept up no problem because that's what's good for right so now you have this big paddle steamer being

chased by a single motorboat and this is where the Germans probably should have been able to fuck up the Mimi pretty easily but there's one design flaw the V-Soon had a pretty glaring design flaw it's cannons were on the front of it,

so it couldn't shoot as it was running away. Oh, that's bad. You gotta put guns on the back too, boys. Just a machine gun, at the very least, would be able to fuck this up pretty good. Just a regular old machine gun would have rendered Spacey's fleet completely powerless. Because it's wood. you're gonna eat it up

uh but oda bricked figured oh it's he's alone like we can do this so this but again this forced him to like i don't know flip a bitch in his boat and bring his six pounder cannons to the front so he could open fire sure

of course this meant that the mimi can move around much faster and bring his six-pounder cannons to the front so he could open fire. Sure. Of course, this meant that the Mimi could move around much faster, fucking up the gunner's aim. And for some reason, Spicer, who was aboard the Mimi, kept missing again. Like, not even close. He was actually firing them this time, because people criticized him the first time around for claiming that he had taken out the Kinganiwee hen. So he's just like going ham.

I'll show you. Yeah, I could totally do this. And he's just flinging rounds wildly. They were badly aimed even for like bouncing across the lake and that is when another crewman saw that it's because spicer had actually ranged the cannon completely wrong because he had no idea what he was doing so the crewman fixed it and while spicer is getting ready to fix uh getting ready to fire an on target shot maybe there there was a misfire probably not though oh hey what a surprise thankfully it didn't blow up in his face uh but i can't believe ss pocket

pussy didn't didn't work out so good like her glorious hms pocket pussy had fallen behind because it was too slow this is meow oh i'm sorry yeah like put some respect on on her majesty's ship the pocket pussy of course my fault so spicer had to call the whole thing off because you know when a misfire happens they have to wait because they've been firing so much the cannon has to cool down before they can extract right I too have played Call of Duty yeah unless the shell explodes in their face now

so they just kind of like cut the engine we're floating there assuming that the Germans would take this as an opportunity to bail but they didn't Odebrecht took this as a possible as an opening to bail, but they didn't. Odebrecht took this as an opening to counterattack. And the reason for this was Odebrecht thought that the main German ship,

the Graf von Goetzen, which was very heavily armed, even for a shitty... Stupid day. Yeah, it's pretty dumb. Even for a dumb lake monster paddle ship, it pretty well armed mostly because they cannibalized the actual navy cruiser the koenigsberg to arm it so it had more than enough power to wipe off this tiny like british puddled fleet off the face of the earth um and you know odebrecht figure that he has to be coming

soon the ship is going to be coming to his assistance so instead of using it as an opening to run he waited expecting it to show up any second now oh boy and as he was waiting biding his time for the perfect revenge

like this went on for over 10 minutes 15 minutes which is like how much time that they needed to fix the mimi's gun and fire again and again in one lucky shot they fucking totaled a warship ship for war whatever yeah one shot smashed through the boiler room, hit the boiler, and caused it to explode. Incredible. We talked about boilers during our War of the Triple Alliance because this happened frequently there.

It's boiling hot water that explodes across the inside packed full of men. So it just turns everybody into that scene from Indiana Jones where their faces are melting. Yeah, where their faces are melting off. so it just turns everybody into like i know like that scene from soup uh uh indiana jones where their faces are melting yeah where the face is melting off yeah yeah but that's like the whole crew down there like ah like uh oh no okay not having a good time yeah it's

when you're really happy and you're partying your face melts like that many people don't know that they're having such a good time. I'm going to put my nose clean off my face. And Odebrecht realized, oh, we're fucked. He ordered everybody to abandon ship and he did the right thing as a naval officer and destroyed his own ship as they bailed out.

Somehow amidst all of this and being led by a human cartoon character and a war characterized by navies armed to the teeth with dreadnoughts, this was the first time that a German naval ensign, which is like the flag, the official flag of the German Navy, Kriegsmarine, whatever, had been captured. captured floating across the lake and picked up at the end of a cane by Spicer riding in a motorboat while wearing a skirt and smoking a penguin cigarette with his name in it.

Sucking his own dick. That's probably one of the weirdest firsts during World War I that I found. Now after all this, you know, blasting men to a fine pace with naval gunfire, Spicer and his captured German captain sat down and had a nice dinner together. Well, it's important to build camaraderie.

I don't know, man. The gentlemanly aspect of war is so stupid that existed still back then. Like, it's all dead now, but, like, it solidly got murdered mostly after World War II. But, like, the idea, like uh i know that i just murdered like a five of your men with boiling hot water and explosions but uh how about a nice i don't know boiled meat or whatever it is that they ate would you like to be pals now the next day the goats and finally showed up uh floating the British cap and, you know, saw what was almost unmistakably the King Ghani there.

And, you know, the, the Visman was gone. Now, upon seeing the, the, the,

the goats, they're flying a flag that just says scoreboard bitches. I would like to believe that the British, along with their crocodile servants built an actual scoreboard just illuminating the night above the lake you wouldn't believe what it costs us to run this thing um yeah and here's the weird part again the goats and didn't do anything. And this time, neither did Spicer. I mean, he vastly outnumbered the goats, and he probably could have swarmed it again,

but he didn't. It just kind of floated on by. I assume it's like the captain leaning out of the window, shaking his fist. Like, damn you, or whatever that is in German. Shaking his fist as he... You know what? No, nevermind. I'm keeping that joke for me. Then out of nowhere,

nobody is sure why Spicer bounced. Um, he just left, uh, reportedly, reportedly he went to Leopoldville, which was the capital of the Belgian Congo. Solid,

horrible name. Um, does what it says on the tip. Yeah. It's like, uh, if you excuse me,'m gonna go to hitler's town uh there uh there doesn't seem to be any naval reasons or records that this was approved he just left it doesn't matter this dude's gonna do whatever he wants anyway that's true uh he'd go to his crew, leaving his second Wainwright in charge with specific orders to not

attack the Goats in no matter what, unless it was in self-defense. Feels kind of treason-y. Yeah, I think that... Now, like, when he was given the mission, the British only knew about the Wiesmann.

They weren't sure about the goatson so like his mission was to destroy the v-sman and claim the lake technically he had done that um i mean he doesn't control the lake because the goats and still out there but like he's like well i technically finished my mission which is the best kind of complete and not to mention a good hope but yeah i've seen enough um you know spicer was always a guy that wanted to go get glory for himself oh yeah

and he'd done it like and i think seeing the goats and he's like oh that seems dangerous let's not do that let's not do that now there's also another possibility here and that is according to spicer he left because he's trying to get control of a boat named the saint george which was made out of steel and much more sturdy than his one motorboats which belonged to the british consul

in leopoldville now he had no orders to requisition this and he kind of does we have established that does not matter for this guy sure but like also he just kind of run an RPG item fetch quest to try to unlock a better boat for his fleet but the thing is is like he wasn't a rear admiral to the council because he was only that to his men who would have put

up with this bullshit he was just some weird commander with no orders who showed up to the council like give me your boat and it's like, what? No, let's do it. Why would I do that? Shut up. So after trying to do it the legal way, Spicer

wrangled up some dudes and stole the goddamn thing and outstanding work, loaded it up on a train to do the same thing all over again. Now there is an idea that spicer was waiting to get the saint george to the lake before he tried to fight the goats and but the saint george never showed up on time um it showed up after the mission was over so because you know it's 1500

miles away now this trip took spicer months in the meantime, his crew literally just sat around to nothing as the war changed around them. The Allied African Campaign, which had begun in earnest in May of 1916, when Spicer finally turned back up at the lake, was finally happening all around them. And he was given orders to advance through the lake and support the ground attack through what is today zambia and then another thing that nobody's entirely sure of why spicy ordered uh uh the goat to be executed what yeah come on nowhere no like the dudes had become friends with this goat while he was gone he just showed up like shoot it what a dick. And then the goat was given a full military funeral. Oh, okay. I mean, I guess.

No, you know what? It doesn't make it better. That sucks. Imagine being ordered to kill the goat for no reason and then render it honors. We could have just kept it alive. I don't know. Yeah, exactly, man. honors like we could have just kept it alive i don't know yeah exactly man uh josephine the chimp however was spared uh and joined them on their their support mission now here's here's

something that still again nobody is sure why spicer refused to do his job like he had orders to go into combat against uh the german forts that lined their side of the lake and just bombed them effectively, right? To open the lake up and also just park there with his fleet and make sure that Germans couldn't escape across the lake. So when he saw the forts, he immediately decided that it was too dangerous and pulled back. Now, of course, this opened up the lake because the Germans were very easily able to escape across it on small boats. And then when he showed up the next day, he got laughed and mocked at by the infantry that are on shore because it turned out that these heavily armed forts that he had run away from were dummies. They weren't armed or and the cannons were like a tree stump sticking out of a window. Yeah, he got yelled at uh he got in trouble of course for refusing oh wow for all the things yeah i'd like the time has come and gone to yell at this guy it does not

matter anymore and then there was another incident uh where uh the belgian dude just loves it so that's he this man's middle name is the incident like there's a there's another problem where the belgians want to cross the lake um because you know obviously it's much easier to simply get loaded up on these ships and transport across and then march all the way the fuck around it uh right and spicer refused um what come on man you built so much goodwill for me and then you ruined it and then to make things even funnier because like there's belgian ships on the go to shot it again i don't fucking know punch it in its face um the belgian ships are about to go help the belgian military and spicer stopped them because he was in command of all

ships on the lake. This meant that he was refusing to let the Belgians help themselves. What an asshole. Soon his own officers turned against him, not sure why their boss, who seemingly before was obsessed with war,

refused to be involved in it now. And they also began to question his command because of course they did soon understandable and this like led um spicer to withdraw completely uh he would only talk to his officers via letter and a hand like a hand-carried letter despite the fact they all literally lived right next to one another right then one day he simply stopped coming out of his hut literally to do anything he didn't even bathe uh this sounds like just a mental breakdown yeah he refused to get out of his bed and kind of like by default left command to wainwright his second um and because like he didn't leave any orders he just stopped showing up

while he was locked away in his room listening to what i assume is fallout boy and telling his mom this is not a phase um the belgian air force bombed the graph on goats in um now because this is a world war one air force that didn't oh god so they so they tossed bombs out the side actually it didn't really do any damage. Just suck it written on them. It didn't really do any damage. I'm not shocked. At this point, the Goatson was actually unarmed. Suck that shit.

The guns had all been removed and the crew was literally just floating there as a deterrent. All of the cannons had been dragged ashore for field use. But the captain of the ship decided been dragged ashore for field use, but the captain of the ship decided he didn't

want it falling in enemy hands, knowing that the time was running out because the allies were capturing the area around the lake. So he sank it.

Fair enough. So the Battle of Lake Tanganyika, in the end, was won entirely without Spicer at all. And actually, without his ship sounds yeah that's keeping it keeping in theme yeah yeah the goatson was dead and now the lake was completely

in allied hands congratulations morons who did it the battle finally over and their brave warrior captain spicer still locked in his room dr hansel which if you remember is the josephine assumes command yeah rear admiral josephine chimpanzee uh but dr hansel uh decided that they needed to do something about this they declared he declared him a medical invalid which is old timey speak for like pretty much anything um yeah mostly mental health related uh but so he could go home and get rest because that's kind of like it was pretty clear that spicer is suffering some pretty crippling ptsd um right and uh you know back then they called it the various different things but amongst them was like combat exhaustion shell shock um yeah um trench brain uh i don't fucking know trench brain

serious case of trench brain uh but they believe that like the the number one cure for this is rest so um okay and you know occasionally getting slapped around i assume is this a normal yeah yeah by a guy who wouldn't by a guy whose only problem with the death camps was that they were in germany and not in america oh yeah patten yep um he's dead and i'm not so who on that one bitch he died in a fucking scooter accident which is probably one of the funniest things guess what i haven't done died in a scooter accident because i'm not a bitch scoreboard somewhere like when you're gonna be walking down the streets of philly there's gonna be a scooter so like silently creeping towards you in the shadows

it's gonna sneak up behind you gret like grab your chin in the back of your head like send me and let's like break your fucking neck i'll be fine i'm unkillable as we've established um but yeah he sent him home to get rest

probably a good idea yeah um and uh he had a paperwork to say to to prove so like all of his medical records whatever and maybe take it take it to the british military hospital where they attach leeches to your eyes and call you a homophobic slur to cure you. However, when Spicer learned that he was being sent home, it wasn't like a no, I don't want to go or whatever situation. He immediately jumped up, packed his bags, and walked out of his room smiling like nothing had happened,

which might be the happiest anybody's ever been for going back to England. I guess congratulations? Yeah. When he arrived back in England, the Navy had already had the doctor's order and had been told about what was going on. He'd been diagnosed with acute mental debility, though Spicer told him that he had malaria, dysentery, cholera,

amongst other horrible diseases. So he had no choice but to come home. Just toss whatever in there. Yeah. I have dropsy, the flux, rickets. I hate to have dropsy. He also

told him that he had been wounded in combat, which he had not been. Oh, he had been. Shut up. And then maybe he knew all of this is a lie, so there's like yeah, sure, whatever you say, bro, just come back in a couple weeks after you go see your wife and rest up. Now, he had had awards showered on to him seemingly at the same rate as he was being reprimanded for refusing to do his job after the sinking of the uh the visman he wrote huge

amounts of letters to newspapers telling them all about his story and how he totally personally sank all of those boats and uh unlike the Navy who was used to his bullshit the press loved this guy because of course he was an eccentric who was willing to talk to them the newspapers declared him a hero and the quote Nelson on the African

Lake okay Nelson months I assume though the navy didn't think a whole lot of him in this whole mess they would never put him in charge of another goddamn thing ever again um he was never to be promoted again and he was immediately sent back to that same desk where he was sitting in where this whole thing started. He eventually left the Navy, retiring, of course, and then

died in 1947. That's a hell of a life after. Yeah, yeah. I also saw something that when World War II started, despite the fact he was older than dust at that point, he like... Put me in, put me in yeah that's exactly

what he did which reminds me of like teddy roosevelt tried to do the same thing in world war one despite the fact he was like obese and 70 years old you love the confidence yeah yeah like absolutely insane shit but like love love the fucking motivation guys uh even if you i'm actually willing to bet in like you know 1941 or whatever if um if he wasn't a a naval officer with a proven track record of horribly incompetent failure that maybe be like you know what fine fuck it you're back in baby yeah good luck but they're like wait who are you again? No, absolutely not. Not back, bitch. No, there is one thing about this story that somehow survives to this day. And depending on where you want to go for a fun little jaunt through the woods, you can experience it.

That is the goatson. It lives on it was refloated in 1924 renamed the mv limba and still serves as a ferry on the lake to this amazing wow now wow which, don't get me wrong, terrifyingly unsafe. But I want to go on it so bad. Yeah, me too. Yeah, it still goes across Lake Tanganyika every single day. Amazing. Spicer's insane story was the inspiration for a novel that you probably haven't heard of, but a film that you probably have, the 1951 Humphrey Bogart

film the African Queen yep that was based on on this the white queen of Africa the African Queen was the boat now as for the Mimi and the Toto because like they just kind of left nobody has any idea

whatever happened to them despite the fact they they're the prized uh uh glorious warships of of the queen uh they they fell off the military register and probably at the end of the war they were sold off to a civilian fleet given to the belgian he's entirely sure nobody kept track of him now the uh niles uh foden uh the author of mimi and toto go forth, tried to find them when he was writing his book. Sure. Nothing doing. Honestly, the weirder part is everybody knew what he was talking about.

Weird. All of the locals around the lake were like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, we know about those boats. And he was told that they all sank nearby. They were pressed into civilian service, fishing boats something like that um the motors broke so they were turning the paddle boats and they sink but he was unable to confirm that because the lake isn't very clear uh so like he tried to like explore and he just saw darkness. Just got nothing. Sure. So I personally would say that's not true. And instead, they're on the lake today as the celestial boat ghosts hunting the Envy Limba, which used to be the goat city. Yep.

Yep. And that is... 100%, dude. That is the Battle of Lake Tanganyika. Probably one of the weirder naval stories that we'll ever talk about. Uh, now like I say weird as in like, you know,

has weird guys in charge, not like weird as in like the battle of Tsushima, which is just one of the most abject failures you could possibly fucking read about when it comes to naval history. Um, but yeah, uh, that's it.

How are you feeling about our boy spicy i've killed the goat man i'm not thrilled yeah yeah it's not great um he was good he was going great until then like i do feel like he had like a mental breakdown he took it on the go yeah yeah yeah that was sort of my yeah been there although i've never killed a goat so i've killed a goat, but it was for food, not a mental breakdown. Yeah, fair enough. And I did not hold a military funeral afterwards for it, unfortunately. Oh, you're a bastard. Now, Liam, we do a thing on the show called Questions from the Legion.

If you'd like to ask us a question, Legion, donate to the show. It's just a buck. You can DM me on Patreon. It's not called a DM on Patreon. It's a message. You can message me on Patreon. You can DM called a DM on Patreon. It's a message. You can message me on Patreon. You can DM me on Twitter, whatever. I don't care.

And ask us a question. We'll answer at the end of the show. Today's question comes from the Patreon. Very long thread of questions from the Legion. And it calls into question an age-old debate, Liam. Would you rather be psychic or have super strength? Oh, super strength. Yeah, me too.

I don't want to fucking know what anyone's thinking ever. Being a psychic seems like a curse. I would just get my feelings hurt. Yes. Being a psychic seems like a fucking witch's curse. Oh, I was thinking of telepathy. Yeah, no. I either said... No, I don't want to...

No. No, dude. like a witch is thinking of telepathy yeah no i either said no i don't want to no no dude i i i want to be able to just like chuck fucking cards at people like the avengers i don't want to fucking i'm gonna i'm gonna think about telepathy in with psychic powers because you don't see someone that's like can like throw things across their mind well that also can't like and absolutely not it's like a twisted version of that milk super strength that's what i'm taking yeah i would now like i'll i'll render you one more psychic super strength or flying flying yeah i'm gonna pick flying um especially as someone who just sat on a on a plane for 20 something hours i'd much rather just fly oh did you did you fly to armenia oh my god i mean how much better would it be if you could just like fly as fast as not like now there's

like this there's superman flying who still flies like the speed of sound or whatever and then there's just like right let's assume like maybe 30 40 miles an hour like goku speeds here right because like 30 40 miles an hour it didn't take you forever to get anywhere like hundreds of miles per hour and it's still i'm just gonna bop around yeah but they're pressurized i'm just gonna bop around philly i mean i assume if you have i mean and if people disagree here please write into the show if you have the ability to fly you're also somehow just pressurized we're assuming we've worked the kinks out okay fair enough like it's not like oh no i've gone too high and your head explodes or whatever sure okay fair enough it's kind of like the cartoon invincible where they can like fly into the or into orbit

you know right anyway that's that's us nerding out about a possible superpowers um Liam plug your shows well there's your problem it's a leftist engineering disasters podcast with slides uh I'm on this piece of shit show called uh lions live

by donkeys my co-host uh licks his own butt. It is true. What's the other fucking thing? 10,000 losses. The host of Lions Live by Donkeys is an accomplished yogi. Thank you.

Thank you everybody for listening. If you like what we do, consider supporting us on Patreon, linesledbydonkeys, backslash, or Patreon, backslash, linesledbydonkeys.

Outstanding work. Good morning, Joe. It is. Then I start doing this at 6 a.m. We do not have our own web domain. Don't type it at the first one. Don't do that. It's probably porn.

I'm a good guy. It probably is porn. Or it's that weird British group. For as little as a dollar dollar you can get access to our to our discord episodes early you get a bonus episode a month get all sorts of stuff or if you if you don't feel like doing the show that's

fine it's your money but leaving your review is free and it helps us I know I've gotten a lot of good ones recently it's always good to see and yeah thanks for that. And until next time, don't have a mental breakdown and take it on a goat. Yeah.

RIP Goatly.