The smell of gunpowder hung thick across the world, and the atmosphere of war grew ever heavier. The great powers would not necessarily come to blows, but the nations and colonies in backward regions were in for a bloody misfortune.
East Africa also made preparations amid this atmosphere. The intensity of army and naval exercises increased greatly, national military training resumed, and the navy in particular received a batch of highly qualified sailors from East African secondary schools. Officers trained by the Ferdinand Naval Academy also began boarding ships for practical training.
December 1877.
The East African Navy conducted large-scale military exercises in the waters off Mozambique and near New Hamburg Port. A total of twenty-five combat vessels participated, including five main ironclads, eighteen gunboats, and two wooden sailing warships. Worth mentioning was that five of the gunboats were masterpieces of Bagamoyo Shipyard, making them domestically built East African vessels.
The number of East African ironclads had risen to five, and at the beginning of next year, it would take delivery of another new vessel from Austria. To better arrange these exercises, the East African Navy concentrated most of its strength in the waters near New Hamburg Port.
This location was close to both Britain's Natal Colony and Maputo, the capital of Portuguese Mozambique, allowing it to effectively display the strength of the East African Navy.
As the East African Fleet carried out exercises in the waters near the two colonies, the strength of the East African Navy was essentially laid bare. Within the Mozambique Channel, the East African Navy launched a series of military operations against its hypothetical enemy.
The East African naval exercises became one of the spectacles of the Western Indian Ocean. Passing vessels were quickly drawn in, and Leiford, Portugal's newly appointed Governor of Mozambique, was