Dove (lake paddle-steamer)

[john sefton]

DOVE (Photograph taken about 1900 at Fort Johnston (Mangochi)) After a British Protectorate had been declared over what is now Malawi, in 1891, three gun boats were brought out, two for duty on the lake and one, the DOVE, to patrol the upper Shire.
The DOVE was a side-paddle steamer, built by Yarrow & Co. and she began operating early in 1893. After about 1900 she was employed as a government transport, and occasionally made journeys on the lake.
In 1946 she was dismantled and her hull used first as a barge and then from 1947 as a ferry at Liwonde.
In 1966 the hull was moved to Monkey Bay where it is still (1997) used as a landing stage.
Length 65'. Beam 14'. displacement 25 tons (approx). Side paddle wheels.
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 SG934

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.

[D. v. Nieuwenhuijzen]

(Malawi 1967, 9 d. StG.278)