Gunboats

The first recorded engagement by a steam-powered warship took place on a river, when in 1824 the Honorable East India Company's gunboat Diana went into action on the Irrawaddy in Burma. In the 150 years that followed, river gunboats played a significant part in over forty campaigns and individual actions.

At the height of the First World War, as armies of thousands fought with each other on European soil, a much more unusual battle was waged in eastern Africa, where Belgian and German colonial territories were separated by the second largest body of water on the continent: Lake Tanganyika. An English big-game hunter living in the region came up with a plan to take out the German warships that patrolled the lake, and command of the mission was given to Geoffrey Spicer-Simson, a disgraced British career officer whose boorish incompetence had earned him the dubious distinction of being the oldest lieutenant commander in the Royal Navy.