By late October 1914, Konigsberg had already earned a fearsome reputation in the Indian Ocean. Under the command of Fregattenkapitan Max Looff, she had surprised and sunk the British protected cruiser HMS Pegasus at Zanzibar in just 45 minutes, killing 38 of her crew. But the raid had come at a cost -- Konigsberg's engines needed a thorough overhaul, and Looff retreated into the Rufiji River delta, a maze of shallow channels and dense mangrove swamps along the coast of what is now Tanzania. The ship's crew camouflaged her so thoroughly that she vanished into the forest canopy. When British cruisers arrived, they were too large to navigate the shallow delta. They could confirm the German raider was in there, but they could not reach her. So began one of the strangest sieges of World War I.

The British threw everything they had at the problem. They sank a blockship, the Newbridge, across one of the delta's mouths to trap Konigsberg -- only to realize the delta had other navigable channels. They laid dummy mines in those channels, a bluff they considered a doubtful deterrent. They brought in Sopwith seaplanes from the Royal Naval Air Service, but the aircraft literally fell apart in the tropical heat, their glue softening and their fabric peeling away. Short seaplanes managed to photograph the cruiser before they, too, were grounded. Even the old battleship HMS Goliath and her 12-inch guns proved useless -- the shallow water kept her too far from range. Meanwhile, P. J. Pretorius, a noted South African tracker and big-game hunter, was recruited to lead shore-based reconnaissance through the German-occupied delta, spending weeks observing the ship's position, mapping navigable channels, and monitoring tidal depths at key locations.

Inside the delta, conditions aboard Konigsberg were deteriorating badly. By March 1915, food supplies ran low, and malaria ravaged the crew. Cut off from the outside world, morale sank. The Germans devised an audacious resupply scheme: they took a captured British merchant ship called Rubens, renamed her Kronborg, gave her a Danish flag and forged papers, and crewed her with German sailors chosen specifically for their ability to speak Danish. Loaded with coal, field guns, ammunition, and supplies, Kronborg successfully infiltrated East African waters before being intercepted by the alerted British cruiser Hyacinth, which chased her to Manza Bay. The crew set the ship afire and abandoned her. Yet the Germans managed to salvage much of the cargo, funneling supplies both to Konigsberg and to the land forces fighting the broader East African campaign.

The solution finally came from Malta. Two shallow-draft monitors, Mersey and Severn, were towed across the Mediterranean, through the Suez Canal, and down the East African coast, arriving at the Rufiji in June 1915. Each carried a pair of 6-inch guns and drew little enough water to navigate the delta's channels. On 6 July, stripped of non-essential weight and with improvised armor bolted on, the monitors ran the gauntlet of German shore fire. Aircraft based on nearby Mafia Island -- two Caudrons and two Henry Farmans -- directed their fire from above. But the monitors had misjudged their position. They found themselves within range of Konigsberg's guns. Mersey took two hits, one disabling her forward gun and another punching through below the waterline. After three hours, both monitors withdrew. They returned on 11 July. This time the bombardment lasted five hours. Konigsberg's guns were knocked out one by one -- four at 12:12, three by 12:42, two by 12:44, one by 12:53. At 13:40, Looff ordered the crew to abandon ship. Two torpedo warheads were detonated in the bow. Konigsberg rolled slightly to starboard and settled, her flags still flying.

The battle did not end with the scuttling. Thirty-three German dead were buried the next day by the 188 surviving crewmen. A plaque was placed near the graves reading, in German, "Killed in action during the sinking of SMS Konigsberg on 11 July 1915." Then the crew got to work. All ten of Konigsberg's 105 mm guns were salvaged, transported to Dar es Salaam, and mounted on improvised field carriages. Under Lieutenant Colonel Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck, those guns and their crews fought a guerrilla campaign across East Africa that lasted until October 1917 -- more than two years after the ship herself had been destroyed. One gun was even mounted on the passenger ship Graf von Gotzen on Lake Tanganyika. Three of the original guns survive today: one at Fort Jesus in Mombasa, Kenya; one outside the Union Building in Pretoria, South Africa; and one at Jinja Barracks in Uganda -- scattered monuments to a cruiser that refused to disappear quietly.