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HMS Fifi
HMS ''Fifi'' was an armed screw steamer, captured from the Germans by Royal Navy units during the Battle for Lake Tanganyika, and used to support Anglo-Belgian operations on the lake and its surrounding areas. She had previously been operated by the Germans under the name ''Kingani'' named after the river Kingani. After a short career supporting German troop movements in central Africa, she was unexpectedly challenged by two motor boats, named HMS ''Mimi'' and HMS ''Toutou'', which had been transported from Britain to the lake by an expedition led by Lieutenant-Commander Geoffrey Spicer-Simson. The faster and more nimble motor boats were able to chase down ''Kingani'', which was unable to bring her larger weapon to bear on the small vessels without turning to face them. After being hit several times and crippled, and with her commanding officer and several men dead, she surrendered and was brought back to the British base. Brought into British service as ''Fifi'', she became the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
German Empire
The German Empire (),Herbert Tuttle wrote in September 1881 that the term "Reich" does not literally connote an empire as has been commonly assumed by English-speaking people. The term literally denotes an empire – particularly a hereditary empire led by an emperor, although has been used in German to denote the Roman Empire because it had a weak hereditary tradition. In the case of the German Empire, the official name was , which is properly translated as "German Empire" because the official position of head of state in the constitution of the German Empire was officially a "presidency" of a confederation of German states led by the King of Prussia who would assume "the title of German Emperor" as referring to the German people, but was not emperor of Germany as in an emperor of a state. –The German Empire" ''Harper's New Monthly Magazine''. vol. 63, issue 376, pp. 591–603; here p. 593. also referred to as Imperial Germany, the Second Reich, as well as simply Germany, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Customs
Customs is an authority or agency in a country responsible for collecting tariffs and for controlling the flow of goods, including animals, transports, personal effects, and hazardous items, into and out of a country. Traditionally, customs has been considered as the fiscal subject that charges customs duties (i.e. tariffs) and other taxes on import and export. In recent decades, the views on the functions of customs have considerably expanded and now covers three basic issues: taxation, security, and trade facilitation. Each country has its own laws and regulations for the import and export of goods into and out of a country, enforced by their respective customs authorities; the import/export of some goods may be restricted or forbidden entirely. A wide range of penalties are faced by those who break these laws. Overview Taxation The traditional function of customs has been the assessment and collection of customs duties, which is a tariff or tax on the importation o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
British Admiralty
The Admiralty was a department of the Government of the United Kingdom responsible for the command of the Royal Navy until 1964, historically under its titular head, the Lord High Admiral – one of the Great Officers of State. For much of its history, from the early 18th century until its abolition, the role of the Lord High Admiral was almost invariably put "in commission" and exercised by the Lords Commissioner of the Admiralty, who sat on the governing Board of Admiralty, rather than by a single person. The Admiralty was replaced by the Admiralty Board in 1964, as part of the reforms that created the Ministry of Defence and its Navy Department (later Navy Command). Before the Acts of Union 1707, the Office of the Admiralty and Marine Affairs administered the Royal Navy of the Kingdom of England, which merged with the Royal Scots Navy and the absorbed the responsibilities of the Lord High Admiral of the Kingdom of Scotland with the unification of the Kingdom of Great ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kigoma
Kigoma is a city and lake port in Kigoma-Ujiji District in Tanzania, on the northeastern shores of Lake Tanganyika and close to the border with Burundi and The Democratic Republic of the Congo. It serves as the capital for the surrounding Kigoma Region and has a population of 215,458 (2012 census). The town is situated at an elevation of . The historic trading town of Ujiji is located south-east of Kigoma. Transport Maritime transport Kigoma is one of the busiest ports on northeastern Lake Tanganyika since historically it was the only one that had a functioning railway connection (the one at Kalemie in The Democratic Republic of the Congo is not operational at the moment), a direct link to the ocean port at Dar es Salaam. Kigoma Port in the Kigoma Bay has a wharf of and several cranes and is equipped to handle shipping containers. However, the bay is suffering from silting up as a result of soil erosion from surrounding hills, and the water depths at wharfside has diminished f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Belgian Congo
The Belgian Congo (french: Congo belge, ; nl, Belgisch-Congo) was a Belgian colony in Central Africa from 1908 until independence in 1960. The former colony adopted its present name, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), in 1964. Colonial rule in the Congo began in the late 19th century. King Leopold II of the Belgians attempted to persuade the Belgian government to support colonial expansion around the then-largely unexploited Congo Basin. Their ambivalence resulted in Leopold's establishing a colony himself. With support from a number of Western countries, Leopold achieved international recognition of the Congo Free State in 1885. By the turn of the century, the violence used by Free State officials against indigenous Congolese and a ruthless system of economic exploitation led to intense diplomatic pressure on Belgium to take official control of the country, which it did by creating the Belgian Congo in 1908. Belgian rule in the Congo was based on the "colonial tr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lake Tanganyika
Lake Tanganyika () is an African Great Lake. It is the second-oldest freshwater lake in the world, the second-largest by volume, and the second-deepest, in all cases after Lake Baikal in Siberia. It is the world's longest freshwater lake. The lake is shared among four countries—Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Burundi, and Zambia, with Tanzania (46%) and DRC (40%) possessing the majority of the lake. It drains into the Congo River system and ultimately into the Atlantic Ocean. Etymology "Tanganika" was the name of the lake that Henry Morton Stanley encountered when he was at Ujiji in 1876. The name first originated from the Bembe language when they arrived in South Kivu around the 7th century, they discovered the lake and started calling it “êtanga ‘ya’ni’â” which means “a big river” in their Bantu language. Stanley found also other names for the lake among different ethnic groups, like the Kimana, the Yemba and the Msaga. An alt ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Technical Atmosphere
Technical may refer to: * Technical (vehicle), an improvised fighting vehicle * Technical analysis, a discipline for forecasting the future direction of prices through the study of past market data * Technical drawing, showing how something is constructed or functions (also known as drafting) * Technical file, set of technical drawings * Technical death metal, a subgenre of death metal that focuses on complex rhythms, riffs, and song structures * Technical foul, an infraction of the rules in basketball usually concerning unsportsmanlike non-contact behavior * Technical rehearsal for a performance, often simply referred to as a technical * Technical support, a range of services providing assistance with technology products * Vocational education, often known as technical education * Legal technicality, an aspect of law See also * Lego Technic, a line of Lego toys * Tech (other) * Technicals (other) * Technics (other) * Technique (other) Te ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Boiler
A boiler is a closed vessel in which fluid (generally water) is heated. The fluid does not necessarily boil. The heated or vaporized fluid exits the boiler for use in various processes or heating applications, including water heating, central heating, boiler-based power generation, cooking, and sanitation. Heat sources In a fossil fuel power plant using a steam cycle for power generation, the primary heat source will be combustion of coal, oil, or natural gas. In some cases byproduct fuel such as the carbon monoxide rich offgasses of a coke battery can be burned to heat a boiler; biofuels such as bagasse, where economically available, can also be used. In a nuclear power plant, boilers called steam generators are heated by the heat produced by nuclear fission. Where a large volume of hot gas is available from some process, a heat recovery steam generator or recovery boiler can use the heat to produce steam, with little or no extra fuel consumed; such a configuration is common ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Marine Steam Engine
A marine steam engine is a steam engine that is used to power a ship or boat. This article deals mainly with marine steam engines of the reciprocating type, which were in use from the inception of the steamboat in the early 19th century to their last years of large-scale manufacture during World War II. Reciprocating steam engines were progressively replaced in marine applications during the 20th century by steam turbines and marine diesel engines. History The first commercially successful steam engine was developed by Thomas Newcomen in 1712. The steam engine improvements brought forth by James Watt in the later half of the 18th century greatly improved steam engine efficiency and allowed more compact engine arrangements. Successful adaptation of the steam engine to marine applications in England would have to wait until almost a century after Newcomen, when Scottish engineer William Symington built the world's "first practical steamboat", the '' Charlotte Dundas'', in 1802. Ri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Beam (nautical)
The beam of a ship is its width at its widest point. The maximum beam (BMAX) is the distance between planes passing through the outer extremities of the ship, beam of the hull (BH) only includes permanently fixed parts of the hull, and beam at waterline (BWL) is the maximum width where the hull intersects the surface of the water. Generally speaking, the wider the beam of a ship (or boat), the more initial stability it has, at the expense of secondary stability in the event of a capsize, where more energy is required to right the vessel from its inverted position. A ship that heels on her ''beam ends'' has her deck beams nearly vertical. Typical values Typical length-to-beam ratios ( aspect ratios) for small sailboats are from 2:1 (dinghies to trailerable sailboats around ) to 5:1 (racing sailboats over ). Large ships have widely varying beam ratios, some as large as 20:1. Rowing shells designed for flatwater racing may have length to beam ratios as high as 30:1, while a cor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
