The Steamboating Forum

You can borrow the ebook for free on the internet archive,
https://archive.org/details/steamboatroundbe00burm

Love that link TahoeSteam. I really like that they IDed all of them. I wouldn't even know of my great grandfather's Nyitra if it wasn't written on the photo by my Aunt dictated from my grandmother.

-CB

How about from the home of steam stories of the 'puffers'. The 'vital Spark', and 'The Maggie' are 2 favourites

Isn't there something called the Parahandy Tales?

cyberbadger wrote:You can borrow the ebook for free on the internet archive,
https://archive.org/details/steamboatroundbe00burm

Love that link TahoeSteam. I really like that they IDed all of them. I wouldn't even know of my great grandfather's Nyitra if it wasn't written on the photo by my Aunt dictated from my grandmother.

-CB

Me too! It'll make me feel so much closer every time we do the Great Delta Steamboat meet on the California Delta

Gudmund,

Watched "The Maggie" today and enjoyed it. Scotland looks like a wonderful place. I'm a "Still game" fan as well, if you see Jack and Victor, say heyo

-Ron

There is a whole book to be written about the manufacture of the five iron hulled launches in England (one of which the Queen is purported to have been), the shipment of them to Africa and the transport by rail and sledge pulled by steam traction engines overland from the port to the lake. They were equipped with bow guns of some sort and were intended to challenge the Louisa's control of the lake. Hard to imagine the Queen as an offensive weapon though.

My understanding is that they were ineffective and were abandoned to civilian service at the end of the war. The Louisa, as has been well documented, was sunk by its German crew at the approach of the British army overland, raised and put back in service by the colonial service, transferred to national service at independence and is still in use. I believe that the boiler(s?) finally got too far gone for economical repairs and that she now has an I.C. engine. Wonder what happened to the engine?

There were gleeful comments from Germans at the time of the filming about the Louisa being back under the right flag, if only for the film.

Remarkably enough, the Louisa was prefabbed in Germany, I believe even tested, and disassembled for transport. We live in an effete age.

There is reason to believe that the hull in intermittent use and display in Florida, is, indeed the hull from the film. Like George Washington's axe, which while having gone through three heads and fourteen handles, was still the original axe, the hull is surely the only original surviving artifact.

However much I enjoy the various other films and books, The African Queen with all of it's gaffes, is still the ur story of small launches. Rivers and wood fuel!

Mike,

Sounds like an interesting story to investigate. Everything I've found on the web keeps mentioning one boat for the movie, I could have sworn in her book, Hepburn mentioned other boats as well, I could be wrong. I'll have to drag that copy out of the archives and re-read it. Some great pics as well. The book is called something like "The making of the African Queen, or How I almost lost my mind in Africa" By Katherine Hepburn.

Was looking around and found a recent CNN article. It claims that the hull has been replaced. Along with the boiler and obviously the engine. If that is accurate, there is not much left of the original, if anything. For posterity, the original should have been put in a museum for preservation.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/04/30/showbiz/a ... en-bogart/

-Ron

Given the performance of the press in just about everything they have touched recently the only conclusion I would draw from anything they said is that their mouth was open.

That said, the hull in Florida is riveted iron construction. I cannot imagine where I would find the materials and skills to replace it. If it had been steel it would have rusted away long ago. I don't understand the factors but iron seems to hang in there.

I have that book by Hepburn. It includes pictures of such things as a stern section strapped behind a stern wheeler boat to simulate water splashing over her in the rapids sequence. And mentions that the rapids shots of the boat were done with a 1/4 scale model.

I believe, from other sources, that the scenes with Bogart in the water were shot in a studio tank in England. The threat of schistosomiasis, also known as bilharzia, was far too great for anyone to get in the water.

The thing about only Bogart and the director staying disease free turned out to be that the bottled water everyone else was drinking was contaminated! The alcohol that the two of them mixed with that water was killing the bugs.

Altogether an interesting read.

Completely off topic. I thought that bilharzia was only a problem in stationary water, and only close to the bank.??? At least that's what I was told 50 years or more ago when living in S. Rhodesia (Zimbabwe). I know that thoughts on these things get changed from time to time.

Yeah, we are hijacking the thread. Oh, well.

I hadn't heard about the stagnant water thing. But the shots in Hepburn's book show pretty still water.

I have enough problems with the city water down here in Baja!