 He is most famous for his role as leader of a naval expedition to Lake Tanganyika in 1915, where he commanded a small flotilla which defeated a superior German force during the Battle for Lake Tanganyika.Geoffrey Basil Spicer Simson was born in Hobart, Tasmania, on 15 January 1876, one of five children.His father, Frederick Simson, had been in the merchant navy and was a dealer in gold sovereigns in India who eventually settled in Le Havre, France, at the age of thirty-one.