A One-Sided Conflict
With no further word from the palace, the leader of the Royal Navy contingent, Harry Rawson, hoisted the ‘prepare for action’ signal on board the HMS Sparrow at 8.55am. At 9 am, General Lloyd Matthews gave the order for the ships in the harbor to start bombarding the palace. The sultan’s flimsy artillery was destroyed, and the less than sturdy royal structure began to collapse after feeling the effects of the British weaponry. At 9.02 am, Khalid apparently fled through the back exit of the wooden palace and abandoned the defenders.
At 9.05 am, the Zanzibar forces used the obsolete HMS Glasgow to fire upon the HMS St George. The Glasgow’s outdated guns were no match for the St George, and the return fire caused the Glasgow to sink. Fortunately for the crew, the ship was in the shallow harbor, so the mast stayed above water. The Glasgow raised a British flag as a sign of surrender, and the sailors were rescued. There was also a small amount of land fighting as Khalid’s men fired on British troops that approached the palace. Once again, they had little effect on the advancing enemy.
The shelling stopped at 9.40am, the Sultan’s flag was pulled down, and the Anglo-Zanzibar War officially ended. Approximately 500 of Khalid’s men lay dead or wounded. In contrast, one British petty officer suffered serious injuries, but he recovered in hospital. In total, 1,000 rifle rounds, 41,000 machine gun rounds, and 500 shells were fired by the British. With full control of the town and palace, they installed Hamud bin Muhammad as the new Sultan. He was an Arab with British sympathies and was allowed rule with limited powers.
Aftermath
Khalid and around 40 of his men took refuge in the German consulate after the war ended. Ten German marines guarded them and refused to surrender the former Sultan despite extradition requests. Ultimately, Khalid was transported to the German colony of Dar es Salaam in East Africa. He was captured by British forces in 1916 but was released, and he returned to East Africa and died in Mombasa in 1927.
The ruins of the palace were demolished with a new structure erected on the site of the harem. Several of the British leaders involved in the conflict received honors for their conduct before, during and after the war. The British retained control over the Zanzibar Sultanate until 1963 and didn’t face another rebellion.
The United Kingdom terminated the protectorate on December 10 of that year, and Zanzibar became a constitutional monarchy under the rule of Sultan Jamshid bin Abdullah. He was overthrown in the Zanzibar Rebellion just one month later and fled into exile. Over the next six months, the country was known as the People’s Republic of Zanzibar and Pemba and then the United Republic of Tanganyika and Zanzibar before becoming a semi-autonomous part of the United Republic of Tanzania on April 26, 1964.