"Nigeria . . . Where is it?" That was the question asked of me by several
people when I told them that I was going to Nigeria on my appointment to
the British Colonial Service in February 1927. Such a question of course
would not arise today. However, for readers who are not
acquainted with Nigeria, it is situated in the Gulf of Guinea and extends
from the Bight of Benin to the Bight of Biafra on the West Coast of
Africa and has an area of 372,674 square miles, or more than three times
the size of the United Kingdom. It is bound on three sides by French territory
and, before it received Independence in October 1960, was the largest
territory of the British Colonial Empire. It takes its name from the River
Niger which rises in the Futa Zalon mountains N.E. of Sierra-Leone and
after flowing two-thirds of its length through French territory enters
Nigeria from the West and runs in a S.E.'ly direction until it receives the
waters of the Benue River, its principal tributary, at Lokoja, about 400
miles from the sea. Its total length is 2600 miles. (Niger means BLACK
and Benue means WHITE). Another important river in Nigeria is the
Cross River which is 370 miles long and flows through Calabar and thence
for another forty miles to the sea.
Nigeria's population today is estimated at about 140 million but during the
war years of 1939-45 it was in the region of just twenty-five millions. Since I
am writing about the war years I will continue in the past tense and keep
my facts of events to that period.
Briefly, the war effort of the Nigerian Marine was the satisfactory functioning
of the ports to enable shipping to collect the country's produce
and in this connection to safeguard the approaches to the ports by operating
a minesweeping service and an anti-submarine patrol with surface
high speed craft.
The principal port of Lagos, which is at the mouth of the Ogun River, was
kept to a uniform depth by an extensive mobile sand dredger system. A
detailed description of this and other services of the Nigerian Marine are
given in the following paragraphs.
The Government of the Colony and Protectorate of Nigeria comprised
European and African officers, the Europeans being appointed by the
British Government in London in the first instance. The policy of the
Government was indirect rule through Native Administrations, with an
Executive Council and a Legislative Council.
Lagos Island was the capital and the mainland was the protectorate — a
geographical analogy would be the Isle of Wight in relation to the mainland
of Great Britain. The Legislative Council consisted of twenty
members including heads of departments of which the Honourable
Director of Marine held a very senior position.
The Marine Department, which was controlled by the Director of Marine,
was responsible for all maritime matters in the Colony and Protectorate
of Nigeria such as harbours, inland waterways, navigation aids including
lighthouses, a buoyage system (moulded on that of Trinity House),
hydrographical surveys, harbour pilotage, the satisfactory accommodation
of shipping and a regular supply of coal for use by the Nigerian
Railway, the electricity power station at Ijora (Lagos) and its own dockyard
with a 3,000 ton dump sufficient to supply its fleet of sea-going
vessels, mobile and moored dredgers (bucket & suction), ocean & reclamation
tugs and inland waters steam launches.
Its dockyard, with a 4,000 tons floating dock, a 600 tons slipway and up-to-date workshops was the largest on the West coast of Africa. The dockyard
staff designed and constructed launches and coastal craft up to 500 tons displacement. The personnel of the administrative staff and floating staff of the department consisted of fully qualified and experienced
officers at the time of their respective appointments in London and the
majority of them held a commission in the Royal Naval Reserve. The
members of the European staff of the dockyard were also qualified in all
respects in their professions and trades at the time of their appointment in
London and the African Petty Officers and Ratings were trained by them
in the dockyard at Apapa (across the harbour on the mainland and opposite
Lagos).
On the outbreak of war many of the Reserve Officers, except the very
senior, were called-up for service in British home waters which obviously
left the department short of staff. For the remaining members some of the
peacetime duties were waived and additional wartime duties imposed.
There was very little, if any, Marine activity in the far North of Nigeria so
it would be reasonable to say that about sixty-five per cent of the total
area of 372,674 square miles was virtually the responsibility of the Director
of Marine in so far as it concerned maritime matters and this was
divided into six divisions of approximately 40,000 square miles each. The
six divisions in order of precedence were:- Lagos, Port Harcourt,
Forcados, Calabar, Victoria and Lokoja. A senior officer was appointed to
each division and he was designated the Divisional Marine Officer or for
the purpose of brevity... D.Mar.O. Included in his multifarious duties
was that of harbour master at the port of his domicile and also for the
river ports within his division. He visited these sub-divisional ports
periodically by launch in peacetime but was perforce restricted in wartime.
Besides being harbour master he was the marine surveyor and the
regular trading vessels of the coast and inland waters came once each year
to his headquarters for him to survey them. (The boilers and machinery,
including Diesel engines, were surveyed by his European Engineer).
Soon after the outbreak of war the Marine Department became the
Nigerian Naval Defence Force indirectly under the command of His
Excellency The Governor & Commander in Chief of Nigeria but directly
under the control of the Director of Marine. The N.N.D.F. was accorded
Royal Naval status. It performed the naval duties of mines weeping and
anti-submarine patrols with fast surface light craft. Confidential movements
of merchant shipping were controlled by the Resident Naval
Officer, Lagos, through the D.Mar.O's at each port. I should mention
here that when Nigeria became an independent state in October 1960 the
N.N.D.F. became the Royal Nigerian Navy, under the aegis of Great
Britain. (She was and still is a member of the Commonwealth).
Pilotage
Pilotage of shipping at the port and its approaches was compulsory at
Lagos and Port Harcourt. At the other ports of Nigeria the shipmasters
performed this duty in their own ships, a knowledge of the ports and
rivers being one of the qualifications for promotion to command of the
regular traders in peacetime. Whenever a 'stranger' entered Nigerian
waters the master invariably called upon the harbour master, through his
agent, to perform that function. This became rather burdensome during
the war years when many 'stranger' vessels were sent by the British
Ministry to Nigeria for urgent war supplies. I should mention here that
during the earlier years of a D.Mar.O's service he was engaged in hydrographic
surveys of the harbours and river estuaries. He also commanded
the Government ships and of course conducted his own pilotage.
The principal exports from Nigeria were:- palm oil, palm kernels, ground
nuts, rubber, hides & skins, cocoa, cotton lint, glycerine, piassava fibre,
tin, wolfram & tungsten, and timber especially for the decks of aircraft
carriers. Of the foregoing items the greatest demand was for edible oil in
the form of palm oil. These exports were conveyed to Britain in ships of
the British Ministry of Transport which of course included the regular
peacetime traders of Elder Dempster Lines, The United Africa Company
and the John Holt Line.
Every Dry Season when the rivers were at low level a junior officer led a
party of African 'water boys', usually of the Ijaw tribe, on a waterway
clearing operation. The party negotiated the rivers by native canoes for a
distance inland of about two hundred miles and en route cleared the
channels of fallen trees by using axes and machettes and, where the snags
were submerged, by gelignite explosive. For this explosive work the
officer was awarded the colossal sum of two shillings a day! The operation
took from five to six months and it occurred simultaneously in each
Division.
When the French Government collapsed in 1940 and a collaborationist
government was set-up in the town of Vichy under the control of Marshal
Petain, the underground resistance movement under the direction of
General de Gaulle endeavoured to save the French colonies. One such
colony was the French Cameroons adjacent to the British Cameroons
which, by the way, was a province of Nigeria, under British mandate by
the League of Nations. Before the 1914-18 war this mandated territory
was a German colony. The Nigerian Marine assisted the de Gaulle movement
by sending in a volunteer Senior Marine Officer in charge of a
trained African raiding party to seize power in the capital town of
Douala. He was dressed like a commando with a black face and camouflaged
clothing and I think he used burnt cork to give himself a black face. However, he proceeded with his party through the creeks at night
and accomplished a successful raid by taking the key positions by surprise. The intended raid was a very closely kept secret at the time. Once in
control of all strategical establishments he was able to prevent the population
'going Vichy' on the side of Germany — the enemy. For this daring
and successful exploit the Senior Marine Officer was awarded the Order
of the British Empire. You can read an account of this operation by Ronald Bird entitled: Cutting out Expedition to Fernando Po
Tragedy
Another event, but with a sad ending, was the sinking of the Nigerian
Marine's biggest and most up-to-date mobile sand suction dredger which
dredged the main channel and carried its own spoil. It was the ROBERT
HUGHES, named after a former Director of Marine, Captain Robert
Hughes, R.D., R.N.R. As usual, the minesweepers left Lagos harbour at
daybreak and swept the westerly approach channel. The Oropesa sweeps
did not reveal any moored mines and the sweeping vessels plugged along
on their slow journey westward. After about five miles the usual sweeping
monotony set in; any reader who has experienced minesweeping will
appreciate my meaning. With the approach channel declared 'clear of
mines' the dredger ROBERT HUGHES proceeded outwards with a 4,000
tons load of sand spoil. She reached the entrance at the end of the West
Mole when she blew apart and sank, thus blocking the main channel of
Lagos harbour — shipping could neither enter nor leave the port. Consequently
the port of Lagos was closed until the divers from the dockyard
could remove the wreckage with explosives. The commanding officer and
some of the ratings in the vicinity of the bridge of the dredger were killed
instantly. The theory advanced at the enquiry was that a German submarine
based on the 'neutral' Spanish colony of Fernando Po had observed
our sweepers in operation and then moved in to deposit its magnetic
mine, or mines, near the entrance to the harbour. As previously
mentioned, Lagos is situated at the mouth of the Ogun River and therefore
receives all the silt washed outwards by that river; therefore, it can
well be understood what a loss this dredger was to the port of Lagos.
Another sad event was the explosion of three naval trawlers whilst handling
explosives alongside the dockyard wharf preparatory to refitting. For
some reason, not definitely known, the sweepers blew-up and wrecked the
dockyard and workshops and smashed windows in the Lagos Secretariat
and nearby buildings which were almost a mile away across the harbour. I
do not know how many ratings were killed because I was away from
Lagos at the time. The unanimous theory was that a leakage from the
pipeline of an oil-tanker discharging at the oil wharf had drifted downstream
on the ebb tide and surrounded the sweepers. Then, by some
mysterious means, it became ignited and the explosion followed. From a
materialistic point of view it could be regarded as a blessing in disguise because
in consequence the dockyard was rapidly rebuilt under emergency
conditions with up-to-date workshops and machinery and concrete
administrative buildings. Without that disaster the Nigerian Marine
would have plodded along with the old out-of-date equipment ad infinitum.
Humour
To switch from a tragic to an amusing diversion I must give an account of
the disposal of unwanted produce at Calabar. It was explained to me by
local acquaintances that in order to prevent the French Cameroons 'going
Vichy' the Nigerian Government decided to buy her produce. In this
connection and for reasons unknown to me, part of the cocoa harvest was
unwanted; it was either surplus to our requirements or it did not reach the
grade required by our Chamber of Commerce. However, at the request of
the Resident, who was the senior political officer, the D.Mar.O. arranged
for a big lighter load of bags of cocoa beans to be towed twenty six miles
down river to Tom Shot Bank buoy, which was the safety limit for inland
waters open-cockpit launches. There it was dumped on an ebb tide. It
could not be taken out to sea because no sea-going craft were available.
However, in due course the lighter was returned to Calabar but that was
not the end of the story. Several flood tides later the cocoa beans, which
were floating on the surface, were retrieved by a host of canoe fishermen
and sold in the market in Calabar, probably with the belief that they
would eventually be bought by the European agents for shipment
overseas!
During the war the Forcados Bar was gradually silting-up. At the same
time reports were coming in to headquarters at Lagos that the Escravos
Bar was scouring. Since this entrance would be a good alternative to
Forcados Bar which gave shipping access to the river ports of Burutu,
Warri, Sapele and Forcados, the Hydrographic Officer at Lagos decided
upon an exploratory survey of the bar and its approaches. It was at the
end of the Dry Season and the weather was beginning to deteriorate with
an accompanying South-west swell which of course was unfavourable for a
bar survey. The Hydrographic Officer, anxious to complete the job
before a break in the weather, decided to carry on sounding after
sundown and well into the night — The eight hour day was a dream of
the past — So he arranged for kerosene pressure lamps to be exhibited at
his beacons and leading marks along the shore line and these were
attended by African ratings whose job it was to keep the pressure lamps pumped as required. The lights enabled him to take horizontal sextant
angles simultaneously with the soundings from the launch. The buoyage
vessel used for surveying was kept within the five fathom line and was
therefore comparatively safe from submarine attack. Submarines would
not surface because of the presence of patrol craft. Some of the H.O.'s
shipmates aboard the buoyage vessel DAYSPRING may have had the
idea that perhaps he was creating an impression with the object of
ingratiating himself with the head of his department — The Director!
Albeit, he got the job done satisfactorily and the Escravos Bar was
officially opened to British and allied shipping.
On one occasion during the month of October 1942 when small craft were
in demand and were being commandeered for our Naval Service it was
necessary for the D.Mar.O. at Forcados to proceed eighty miles by motor
launch to the river port of Sapele to inspect a small vessel. During his
absence an urgent coded message was received at Forcados and duly
decoded by his wife. It is imperative to add at this juncture that the
officer's wife had been working at the British Admiralty in London prior
to joining her husband in Nigeria and that she was au-fait with the Naval
coding system and the working of Naval Intelligence, therefore she was
authorised, under the Official Secrets Act, to perform this work
voluntarily. However, to continue the story, the coded message was to the
effect that a convoy coming up from the South was twelve hours ahead of
its original E.T.A. and in consequence all shipping from the Niger Delta
ports had to assemble at Forcados in time to receive amended orders and
to cross the tidal sand bar on a flood tide and so merge with the convoy
coming up from the South. The reader will understand that it would be
dangerous to remain hove-to in the vicinity of the Fairway Buoy awaiting
the arrival of the convoy. Timing was of the essence, in legal parlance,
when arranging for ships from Warri, Sapele and Burutu to arrive at the
focal point at Forcados in time for crossing the bar. The prospect of
M.L.'s arriving from Lagos was no guarantee of safety against a
submarine's torpedoes. Mrs. D.Mar.O. (I will call her this for
convenience) with her initiative and ability handled the situation
admirably: She contacted local shipping agents by a previously arranged
code and accordingly advanced the departure of all shipping in time to
meet the convoy. For this effort she was commended by the Director of
Marine, the Resident Naval officer at Lagos (Captain R.N.) and on his
recommendation, the Flag Officer Commanding West Africa — This
Admiral was responsible for the safety of all merchant shipping operating
off the West Coast of Africa.
Another incident occurred in November 1943 when the merchant ship
NORTHLEIGH with a valuable cargo of wolfram and tungsten was
ready for departure from Calabar. As already mentioned, pilotage was
not compulsory at this port but because the NORTHLEIGH of 7,000 tons
was a stranger to the West Coast of Africa her Master requested a pilot.
In such circumstances the harbour master who incidentally was the
D.Mar.O. came to the rescue. The pilotage distance down the Calabar
river to Tom Shot Bank buoy is twenty six miles and since ocean vessels by virtue of their draught can only negotiate the flats at or near high
water the pilotage was performed in two movements. However,
NORTHLEIGH cast off and proceeded twelve miles down stream to
Parrot Island anchorage to await the following flood tide. Approximately
twelve hours later when heaving-up to proceed a coasting vessel was seen
approaching with flags flying and whistle blowing frantically to attract
attention of the NORTHLEIGH. The coaster proved to be the M.V.
AA COWAN of the United Africa Company and when she was within hailing
distance her Master bellowed through his megaphone: "Your wife says
you can't go" — " I repeat, Your wife says you can't go!" So the order to
weigh anchor was delayed and the cable run out again to three shackles in
the water. The reason for this frantic hold-up was that after the
NORTHLEIGH had left Calabar an 'immediate' message was received
and decoded by Mrs. D.Mar.O. (The same lady who took the emergency
action at Forcados in October 1942). The message was from the R.N.O.,
Lagos, ordering the suspension of all shipping on account of enemy
submarines being active off the estuaries of Calabar, Port Harcourt and
Forcados. The lady already mentioned contacted the shipping agent and
stated that she would assume responsibility if he would despatch his
coasting vessel M.V. AA COWAN to Parrot Island with an urgent request to
stop the ship proceeding to Tom Shot buoy. He was aware that her
husband was piloting the ship. It had long been the practice of the
D.Mar.O. to keep his wife informed in advance of his intended river
movements when piloting ships. The D.Mar.O.'s fast motor launch was
already on its way to Tom Shot for the pilot's return journey and the
other official launches were away on the official duties. The final result
was that NORTHLEIGH remained at anchor at Parrot Island for one
week and the Master's most earnest request was for cigarettes and fresh
water. This was complied with by the agent at Calabar. NORTHLEIGH
eventually proceeded and joined a northbound convoy in safety. For this
prompt action Mrs. D.Mar.O. was again commended by the Flag Officer,
West Africa.
When this lady's husband retired from H.M. Colonial Service at the end
of 1949 they followed their son to Australia where she resumed her
nursing profession as a Ward Sister in a Government hospital where she retired before enjoying the sunshine of Western Australia.
Note
Captain Dennis was an apprentice in the Admiralty Transport
BEETHOVEN at Gallipoli in 1915 and went on to serve as a midshipman
RNR from 1917 to 1919 during which time he served in Coastal Motor
Boats of the Dover Patrol (1918) and in the Caspian (1919). After further
Merchant Navy Service he joined the Nigerian Marine in 1927 holding
various commands of that Service's navaids and hydrographic Fleet. In
1943 he was appointed Harbour Master of the port of Calabar and later
Assistant Director of Marine, Lagos (Apapa).
The Lightship
She tugs at her chains with sullen urge,
Twisted around by a strong seas surge,
Stout and squat with her powerful mast,
Topped by a lantern that's shiny and vast.
Not for her the long China run,
Or steam to war with a twelve-inch gun,
No cargo of spice, or silk, or fur,
She lights dark reef where wrecks occur.
No need for her crew to check foreign charts,
No reaching fresh ports in far distant parts,
No voyage to oceans where albatross fly,
Or breaking thin ice where blue whales die,
No turbines to drive her to some cruel fate,
No hard drinking skipper, no buckaroo mate,
She's stuck to her chain, and trusts to her luck,
She lights the rocks that others have struck.
She's hard on her crew who never sail,
But serve the sea in a self made jail,
Chipping and painting and tending her light,
For the safety of shipping it has to shine bright,
Month on, month off, is their grinding shift,
To serve on a vessel that does but drift,
Round and round on her endless trip,
Till storm comes to show she's a rough weather ship.
It's then that her crew pay out more chain,
For it's started to blow and gusting with rain,
The glass is low and on comes fierce gale,
As she heaves and strains and rolls to her rail,
She can't dodge or run for shelter in lee,
She's anchored out there to face the wild sea,
A bitter wind howls in a frenzy of rage,
And breakers foam white on a mad rampage,
Her old plates creaking, she clings to her chain,
This sea won't break her, it strives in vain,
She keeps flashing warnings from her swaying mast,
And Big ships salute her as they sail safely past.
Owen D. Jones
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