Monteith (lake vessel)

[john sefton]

MONTEITH (Photograph taken about 1905 at Fort Johnston (Manguchi)).
The MONTEITH was named after Low Monteith Fotheringham of the African Lakes Corporation who played a distinguished part in the Company's private was against the Arab slave trader Miozi at Karonga, 1887-9, and was manager of the Corporation when he died in 1895.
The ship, a stern paddle wheeler, was probably built by Ritchie, Graham and Milne, of Glasgow, and after assembly at Matope began operating between there and Fort Johnston in December 1896.
Her shallow draught enabled her to run even when the river was very low. She was still in service in 1922 and was broken up about 1940, her hull being used as a ferry.
Length 70'. Beam 16'. Displacement 57 tons. Stern Paddle steamer.
The stamp is from a small Souvenir Sheet which has the outline of lake Malawi running through the stamp into the side margins.
The information used in this article was reproduced from the -Stamp Bulletin' No 47, of the Malawi Post Office of October 1994.
Log Book May 1997
Malawi SG935ms


SHIPS OF LAKE MALAWI
It was David Livingstone who first showed the possibilities for missionary and trade enterprise 01 the waterway to Lake Malawi. via the Zambezi and Shire rivers. during his Zambezi expedition. 1858-64. He also suggested ways of overcoming the barrier to navigation presented by the forty miles of cataracts between the lower and upper Shire. Following his lead European missionaries, traders and settlers began to come to the land which is now Malawi. making use 01 the waterway and bringing with them a variety of boats. Those for use on the lake and the upper Shire, which are dealt with in this Guide, had one thing in common, they had to be dismantled into loads small enough to be carried or dragged by porters overland past the cataracts.
By 189'1, when a British Protectorate was declared over the country, the waterway was well established. From ocean liners passengers and goods were transferred, at the mouth 01 the Zambezi. to shallow draught river steamers which took them up that river and along the lower Shire to the foot of the cataracts. After a land journey of some sixty miles through Blantyre they reached Matope or Mpimbi on the upper Shire and from there went by river steamer again as far as Fort Johnston where they transferred to a lake steamer. Navigation on the rivers was always erratic, depending on the depth of water, at bad times the journey might take weeks or be quite impossible. at good times lake steamers of seventy tons or so could get down as far as Matope.
The Zambezi and lower Shire route was gradually phased out from 1908 by the building and subsequent extension of the Shire Highlands Railway, and the upper Shire route by the development of an effective road system to Fort Johnston during the first World War, which coincided with a period of such low water level that the river became at times little more than a swamp. Lake Malawi has continued throughout to be a well used waterway. In the years 1935, when the railway was extended to Chipoka, Nyasaland Railways, now Malawi Railways, took over goods and passenger services on the lake and made Monkey Bay its lake service headquarters. Fort Johnston, which was the chief port for the lake in the earlier years, has now been renamed Mangochi.