30 August 1914

[nuuumannn]

Royal Navy warships arrive off the coast of German held Samoa and offload New Zealand troops at Apia, who, without a fight, remove the German administrators and haul down the German Imperial ensign and raise the Union Jack. The Ships were the light cruisers HMS Philomel, Psyche and Pyramus, based in New Zealand at the time and described as 'unspeakably useless' and the New Zealand registered Union Steamship Coy merchant ships Monowai and Moeraki carrying some 1400 troops. There was a fear that the German East Asiatic Squadron under Maximillian Graf von Spee was in the region, as Spee had left the German colony at Tsing Tao on the third and had not been heard of since, but he was not there thankfully - the three cruisers were no match for any of Spee's ships, not least his two armoured cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau. This was the first military action against the Germans by New Zealanders of the Great War.

[ErrolC]

There has been a variety of coverage of this over the last little while.

Akl WMM:Entangled Islands, Sāmoa, New Zealand and the First World War
A couple of photos from yesterday's events

TV3 coverage

David Stevens (RAN Historian) covered on Twitter

RadioNZ

[nuuumannn]

Nice links, I saw a mention of it on the news last night, but no mention of the potential threat of a naval battle. Spee's squadron was a big potential threat as the British had no idea at that time where exactly he was. The only Empire warship that could match his two armoured cruisers in firepower was HMAS Australia, sister to HMS New Zealand, which was retained in the region for that reason. Australia escorted the ANZAC convoy as a result of the threat of Spee's squadron.