Samoa Expeditionary Force

Upon the outbreak of World War I on 5 August 1914, the New Zealand Government authorised the raising of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force (NZEF) for service in the war. Mobilisation for the war had already begun, with preparations discreetly beginning a few days prior.[1] The day after the declaration of war, the British Government requested New Zealand seize the wireless station at German Samoa, a protectorate of the German Empire,[2] deeming it "a great and urgent Imperial service."[3] The occupation of German Samoa was actually in accordance with plans laid down prior to the war by the Commander of the New Zealand Military Forces, Major General Alexander Godley.[4]

The Samoa Expeditionary Force began forming following the British request.[3] Colonel Robert Logan, a member of the New Zealand Staff Corps and commander of the Auckland Military District, was appointed to command of the SEF.[5] By 11 August 1914,[6] the SEF consisted of over 1,400 personnel, including three companies of infantry and a company of field engineers.[7] It departed New Zealand on 15 August in a convoy of troopships escorted by the cruisers Philomel, Pyramus and Psyche.[8] After stopping at Nouméa in New Caledonia, where the convoy was joined by the battlecruiser HMAS Australia, the cruiser HMAS Melbourne and the French cruiser Montcalm,[9] the entire expedition, now under the command of Rear Admiral George Edwin Patey,[10] went on to Fiji. Here several Legion-of-Frontiersmen and Samoan chiefs joined the SEF and it then sailed for Samoa on 27 August.[11]

Despite concerns that Spee's East Asia Squadron of two armored cruisers (Scharnhorst and Gneisenau) and four light cruisers (Nürnberg, Leipzig, Dresden and Emden) would interfere with proceedings, the SEF arrived at Apia, the capital of Samoa, on 29 August. It made an unopposed landing, covered by the guns of the accompanying escorts, and secured the Government offices in the town as well as the wireless station several miles away.[12] Logan, now the Military Administrator of Samoa[13] and with the German governor Erich Schultz-Ewerth as prisoner of war, oversaw the official raising of the Union Jack the following day, formally declaring the occupation of German Samoa.[12]

The SEF remained in Samoa until March 1915, when it began returning to New Zealand. A small relief force arrived in Apia on 3 April 1915 and the troopship that brought them to Samoa transported the last of the SEF back to New Zealand.[14] Logan remained and would continue to administer the country on behalf of the New Zealand Government until 1919. His term was controversial for he significantly mishandled the arrival of the Spanish flu influenza pandemic in November 1918, resulting in over 7,500 deaths.[13]