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A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE CEMETERY ON GRAVE ISLAND - ZANZIBAR

by  Kevin Patience.

The cemetery was set up for the burial of Christians and the first recorded is that of a German sailor Thekla Schultz sometime around 1845. Unfortunately by the time the register was compiled his headstone details were illegible

The next definitive burial was that of Francis Peters who died on 21 Nov 1847. The first naval burial was that of Chief Engineer J.C. Winchester of H.M.S. Punjaub who died on 1 October 1860, whose large tomb can be seen at the far end of the cemetery.

There was another cemetery on the edge of the town primarily used by the Church Missionary Society for their members as well as other Europeans but this has largely disappeared with urban growth. In the 1860s the Royal Navy took an increasing interest in the suppression of the East African slave trade that operated out of Zanzibar, which at the time was reported to be selling around 20,000 slaves per annum.  The prime sales took place in the market near the present site of the Anglican Cathedral and the slaves were exported by dhow to Arabia and India. Increasing British political pressure culminated in the arrival in 1873 of the British politician, Sir Bartle Frere with a diplomatic mission to put a stop to slavery out of Zanzibar. The ruler Sultan Bargash bin Said ignored the deputation and it was left to Sir John Kirk, the British Consul, to persuade Bargash to close the market following the threat of an island blockade by the Royal Navy. The trade then moved to Zanzibar's neighbouring island of Pemba, and the navy anchored the old wooden steam-sail battleship HMS London in the harbour in 1874 as a base for further operations. 

Two small naval bases were set up on the islands of Funzi and Misali off the west coast of Pemba and the task of patrolling the channels leading to the towns of Chake Chake and Wete continued from there until the early 1890s when the trade had all but stopped and the bases were abandoned. Misali is now a marine park. The dhows were seasonal travellers depending on the two monsoons. The Kaskazi which brought the dhows to Zanzibar, laden with carpets, chests and trade goods and the Kusi, which took them back again laden with ivory, mangrove poles and slaves.

The dhows were chased by naval sailing and later steam cutters, usually crewed with six sailors armed with cutlasses and rifles, under the command of a junior officer, with instructions to stop and search suspected vessels. During the course of the next fifteen years the Navy suffered numerous casualties aboard the variety of ships based in the region. Many drowned, some died falling from mainmasts and some from heat exhaustion, especially stokers who laboured for hours on end shovelling coal in boiler rooms, whose temperatures soared over the hundred degree mark. Others died of malaria, Blackwater Fever or dysentery. There were explosions aboard ships when guns misfired and torpedoes exploded. A few died from gunshot wounds received when chasing and boarding slave dhows. Most were buried on the island while others were buried at sea.

On 18 December 1879 Sultan Bargash bequeathed the cemetery in perpetuity to the navy for the burial of Europeans, with the care and maintenance being taken care of by the British Admiralty. In August 1880 the land was consecrated by Bishop Steere, Bishop of Zanzibar as a Church of England cemetery. Maintenance was subsequently taken over by the Zanzibar Public Works Department in the 1920s until 1964 when the Marxist Revolution put paid to further maintenance. It was not until the 1990s that site was cleared of bush that was four and five metres high and so dense it was impossible to see the adjacent grave.

Probably the most famous incident in the history of the cemetery, surrounds the death of Charles Brownrigg, Captain of HMS London who with four other crew were killed in a fight with a slave dhow on 3 December 1881. The outcome of this was an expedition led by Sir Lloyd Mathews, the Prime Minister, to Pemba to arrest the owner of the dhow. In the resulting fight the owner and a number of his crew were wounded and killed. The last burial before the cemetery closed was that of Petty Officer Michael Duggan of H.M.S. Hermione who died on 24 July 1907, by which time another European cemetery had been opened on the edge of town.

Just before sunrise on the morning of 20 September 1914 in the opening weeks of the First World War, the British cruiser H.M.S. Pegasus was anchored off Shangani Point, undergoing repair, when the German cruiser S.M.S. Königsberg appeared and opened fire. Within eight minutes the devastating fire from the enemy warship had disabled the Pegasus and its Captain, Commander John Ingles, had no option but to put up a white flag and surrender. The ship sank later that day and today the broken remains lie in ten metres of water about a mile away from the island. Thirty eight men died in the action and fifty five were wounded out of a complement of two hundred and thirty. Twenty-four sailors were buried that afternoon in a mass grave behind the main cemetery, which is maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission based in England.

A walk around the cemetery will show numerous graves with a number only. In many cases these are Royal Navy graves with a number being African crew recruited from the Kroo tribe in West Africa. Known as Kroomen they served the navy well for many years up to the end of the 19th century and in many cases were given strange names like King George. Tom Toby and Bottle of Beer. In total there are around one hundred naval burials. Today a small holiday resort stands next to the cemetery with maintenance being carried out by the staff.

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