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.

[1] The eldest, Theodore Spicer-Simson, became a world-famous medallion portrait artist,[2] moving between France and the United States.

He had a brief tour on a contraband control vessel, where two weeks after taking command one of his gunboats, HMS Niger, was torpedoed in broad daylight.

With control of the Lake, Germany could easily move troops and materials to support its efforts in and around German East Africa.

Spicer-Simson with his experience in Africa and fluency in French and German was appointed by the Admiralty to lead the expedition despite his undistinguished record.

[8] The first leg of Mimi and Toutou's 10,000 mi (16,000 km) journey was completed after 17 days at sea and their arrival at the Cape of Good Hope.

[9] After traveling to the railhead at Fungurume, they were detrained and dragged 146 mi (235 km) through the bush by teams of oxen and steam tractors to the beginnings of the railway from Sankisia to Bukama.

[12] The capture of Kingani and the sinking of Hedwig von Wissmann greatly weakened German naval power on Lake Tanganyika.

The addition of a Königsberg gun gave the Götzen the ability to effectively fire on Mimi, Toutou, and Fifi from well beyond their range.

He refused to send his ships to aid the British Colonial and Belgian Army force in the capture of Mpulungu in present-day Zambia.

[15] While in command on Lake Tanganyika, Spicer-Simson often wore a khaki drill skirt,[16] and he insisted that an Admiral's flag be flown outside his hut.

He gave a series of lectures on his command on Lake Tanganyika and helped write a National Geographic article on his transportation of the two boats through the jungles of the Congo.

[citation needed] Spicer-Simson was the subject of the BBC Radio drama Navy Man God, by Christopher Russell.

In 2004 Spicer-Simson's story was retold in a book by Giles Foden called Mimi and Toutou Go Forth: The Bizarre Battle for Lake Tanganyika.

In 2007, Christopher Dow recounted the same story in a book titled Lord of the Loincloth; the same year, Swiss author Alex Capus published the novel "A Question of Time"[18] which depicts Spicer-Simson as one of the multiple (anti-)heroes.