Review: The Phantom Flotilla, Peter Shankland

The Phantom Flotilla: The most exciting true story from the Royal Navy's historyThe Phantom Flotilla: The most exciting true story from the Royal Navy’s history by Peter Shankland
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

With a few more days’ thought behind it, I am not sure I can really support the 4/5 rating. Maybe 3.5, however, would be accurate.

The book was a good overview of the Lake Tanganyika Expedition, but at the same time it was devoid of any commentary on what was going on. The memoirs of a few of the members of the expedition have been used, but even their thoughts are not expanded on. Furthermore, there was no attempt to describe the German or even Belgian points of view, and for the history to work objectively that should have been done.

Admittedly, the author only claims to write on the British expedition and I suppose that’s fair enough — it’s just that this work, therefore, only acts as a very small cog in understanding the East African theatre.

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