AFRICAN QUEEN

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aukepalmhof
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AFRICAN QUEEN

Post by aukepalmhof » Tue Feb 15, 2011 11:10 pm

Built in 1912 as a steel (other sources give wooden) open hulled steam launch by Lytham Shipbuilding & Engineering Co. at Lytham, England for the British East Africa Railway Company.
Launched as the LIVINGSTONE, named after the famous 19th century African missionary and explorer.
Length 30ft. beam 8ft.
Fitted out with a steam engine.
After completing dismantled and shipped to Africa, transported to Lake Victoria by train and truck and subsequently to Lake Albert where she was assembled again.

On Lake Albert she was used as a work boat transporting freight tourists and hunters.
Her steam engine was later replaced by a 10hp diesel engine.

1951 Discovered by the film director John Huston who was looking for a steam ship for the shooting of the movie “The African Queen”. The movie was based on the book written in 1935 by C.S. Forester, “The African Queen”. He bought or chartered the LIVINGSTONE and trucked the launch down to his movie set in Congo, she was then renamed AFRICAN QUEEN.

When you have seen the movie the AFRICAN QUEEN was sunk at the end of the movie but she was salvaged and the next years she stayed in Africa. During the filming her diesel engine was removed and replaced by a lookalike old steam engine when she was built.
1968 A collector of film memorabilia the American Hal Bailey bought during an auction the AFRICAN QUEEN for £150.
She was brought to Oregon where after she was used to transport tourists on Oregon’s Sun River before she was transported to his horse ranch in Pedro, Florida and stored.
1982 She was bought by Jim Hendricks from Key Largo, Florida for USA$65,000.
He berthed her in front of his Key Largo Holliday Inn, and for several years took devotees on a three-mile canal trip from the inn to the Atlantic Ocean.
After he got problems with the American Coastguard for the needed certificates, the boiler was not ASME certified she was taken out of service.
A new Sisson steam engine was ordered in Shoreham, England, and a new Kingdon type boiler was built by Dixon Boiler Company in Los Angles.
After everything was built in she passed the Coast Guard tests and got her certificates. She was allowed to carry 15 passengers and 2 crew.

1990 She was invited to come to England where after she was shipped on board the CONCERT EXPRESS to the U.K., where she was displayed at several exhibitions.
She took part in the 50th Anniversary of Dunkirk of the “Little Ships” she was invited in the re-enactment.
24 May 1990 she left from Ramsgate to cross the English Channel from Dover to Calais, with on board 4 persons, halfway the crossing they got engine problems and turned back to Ramsgate, with the help of the RLNI lifeboat she were towed inside Ramsgate.
She was later transported to Dunkirk sitting on a trailer on board of a cross cannel ferry.
Two months later she appeared in the parade of ships reviewed by the Queen Mother on her 90th birthday.

After she returned to the USA was she on 18 February 1992 placed on the National Register of Historic Places, and sit now under a canvas roof at Key Largo, Florida where she can be visited by the public.

The MS shows the vessel under the name AFRICAN QUEEN with on board Humphrey Bogart (1899-1957) and on shore the film director John Houston (1906-1987).

Dominica 1988 $5 sgMS?, scott1100.

Source: Various web-sites. Log Book. Watercraft Philately. Wikipedia

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... tored.html

* Sixty years after Humphrey Bogart steered through crocodile infested waters the African Queen is back on the Nile
* Lovingly restored the boat is operated by Cam McLeay, a New Zealand adventurer and Nile enthusiast
* In 1950 Bogart and Katherine Hepburn flew into Uganda to shoot the movie of the same name

Which is the real African Queen? One of two claimants to the "film prop", and it may well be that both are
authentic - one used for scenes in the film shot on the River Congo, and
the other for those on the Nile (though most of the onboard scenes in the
film were shot using a raft, on which was erected a mock-up of the steam
boat).

For the Congo one see
http://edition.cnn.com/2012/04/30/showb ... index.html
This one is still at Key Largo FL, registered with USCG as a passenger
vessel, and operated by African Queen Trust LLC
http://www.st.nmfs.noaa.gov/pls/webpls/ ... _in=947514
Although she has long been said to have been built as LIVINGSTONE for the
British East Africa Company by Lytham Shipbuilding & Engineering Co, there
considerable doubt over this; indeed, the Friedenthal family, who owned the
Lytham shipyard, were of the firm view that their company had not built
her.
Another shipbuilder possibility is Abdela & Mitchell at Brimscombe,
Gloucestershire.
see http://bajkoblogs.files.wordpress.com/2 ... eenlep.pdf

Where that leaves this "Nile" one, I am not at all sure. But this article
attempts to address its authenticity:
http://www.independent.co.uk/travel/afr ... 59537.html
source internet.
Attachments
tmp135.jpg
African-Queen-Key-Largo.jpg

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