Lord of the Loincloth: The Adventures of the Royal Naval African Expedition and Its Intrepid Leader, Commander Geoffrey Basil Spicer-Simson

It’s World War I, and the fate of Africa lies in the hands of a madman—an eccentric Royal Navy commander who sank his two previous commands in the most ridiculous ways possible. Geoffrey Spicer-Simson is ordered to destroy two ships that give the Germans military control over the continent, but that may be easier said than done. The ships are on Lake Tanganyika, and to get there, Spicer-Simson and his men will have to drag two 40' gunboats over desert torn with ravines, through tsetse-infested swamps, and across a 6,000-foot range of mountains. Undaunted, Spicer-Simson forges ahead, but can his men accept the leadership of a pretentious braggart who names his gunboats Mimi and Toutou, is completely covered with tattoos, and wears a leather skirt instead of a uniform? And if the journey to the lake isn’t bizarre enough, imagine what happens when they get there and meet the Germans in mortal combat on the high seas in the middle of Africa! Lord of the Loincloth is the humorously adventurous account of one of the 20th century’s strangest heroes and his extraordinary quest for redemption.