The Steamboating Forum

I was surprised nodody came on line with questions about the "A J Goddard" I f you've read Robert Service's poem about the cremation of Sam Magee you will have heard of Lake Leberge. If not Lake Laberge is in the Yukon and the "A J Goddard" was transfering miners and supplies to the goldfields in the Yukon. After the goldrush she stayed on and was sunk in 1901 in a storm with 3 lost and 2 survivors. She was found last year in 40 ft of water with wood in her boiler as the crew was trying to break free of the ice! Everything is as it was when it went down-even a crewmembers pants and boots are on deck -as he shed them to swim to shore. National Geographic has a video [look up "A J Goddard"] She was built in San Francisco and shipped to Alaska then overland to the Yukon-sounds like the SS Tahoe doesn't it.Build it somewhere else ,take it apart, move it ,rebuild it,steam it! I guess no-one told the americans it couldn't be done! And if someone did tell them -they did it anyway!! [/img]

farmerden wrote:Build it somewhere else ,take it apart, move it ,rebuild it,steam it! I guess no-one told the americans it couldn't be done! And if someone did tell them -they did it anyway!!

Although this may sound a rather difficult way of doing things it was in fact quite a common practice .

Indeed if the intended area of operation was not industrial (precluding local construction) and the boat in question was too large to travel as deck cargo but too small to travel there under her own steam or if the final destination was inland , there was no other option .

Numerous steam boats were built by British ship builders for service in Africa and South America and assembled on site , sometimes under very difficult and primitive , in engineering terms , conditions .
Of course sods law means that I can't recall any specific names at the moment . No doubt somebody out there will oblige .
Slightly nearer to home (my home) the larger steamers on Windermere were built at Barrow-in-Furness but assembled at the lakeside . This however wasn't too difficult as the distance is only about 30 miles , so if the assembly party found that the shipper had forgotten to pack the boiler or similar it was possible to get the part quite soon . Not so simple from the shore of one of the great lakes of Africa or 2000 miles up the Amazon !

I'm sure this must have happened often within the USA when the West coast was undeveloped but industry in the East was booming and slightly later , as in the case of the AJ Goddard , when Alaska was undeveloped (some would say it still is) but the rest of the country was developed .

Not quite sure who would win the prize for largest vessel shipped in pieces and assembled at a given time and technology, but a good contender would be USS Camanche http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Camanche_(1864), a "Passaic" class monitor of 1864.

Prefabricated at Jersey City, NJ, she was 200' LOA, 46' Beam, and drew 11'6" of water, with a displacement of 1335 tons. She mounted two 15" Dahlgren smoothbore guns. Armor was: sides 5" - 3", turret 11", deck 1". She was disassembled and shipped on the sailing vessel Acquilla via Cape Horn to San Francisco, CA, to provide protection for San Francisco Bay and the new US Navy Mare Island Shipyard. There the Aquilla sank with Camanche still aboard. Her parts were salvaged and she was assembled in San Francisco, commissioned in May, 1865 - just after the end of the US Civil War. She was sold in March 1899.

Edward, I think one of the ships that was assembled in Africa you're thinking about was the Chauncy Maples. There was a series of articles about her in the Funnel a while back. I think she is still afloat even, though presumably retro-fitted with diesels (where's the "puking" smilie?).

Den, I checked out the pictures and video. That sure is amazing. Somebody should raise and restore her.

Ya she looks too good to leave down but if she has a iron bottom wouldn't that be deteriorating pretty good after 109 years? Yet they still recognize wood in the hold so maybe cold fresh water isn't too bad? I dunno Den

Depending on the Ph of the water cold fresh water doesn't cause rust very quickly . (the colder the better)
If the hull is iron rather than steel that's also promising since it rusts more slowly than steel (depending on any impurities etc).
So it might not be too bad , even so 109 years is quite a while , so I wouldn't be too optimistic about the state of the hull .

Regards Edward .

One of us should "volunteer" to go diving with them as their steam attache. From the looks of the boiler it appears to be a watertube, similar to an Almy

Weren't those WW1 boats like the one they resurrected for the movie African Queen built in the U.K. and shipped to Kenya or some such place?

Not a prefab, of course, but still a non-trivial overland shipping exploit.

Mike

The SS Yavari on lake Titicaca (the highest inland lake in the world) was also transported in knocked-down state from Glasgow to the lake shore.

Although diesel powered now, she is still used on the lake.

SY Gondola was supplied in knocked-down condition too- twice! First in 1859 from Liverpool to Coniston by horse and cart, then, secondly in 1979 from Barrow in Furness on the back of four lorries.

Greg

Mike is referring to a running skirmish between Germany and Britain on inland African shipping. Substantial gunboats were transported overland, along with their stores and ordnance. The RN won the field, or lake, as it were. The USNI's Naval History ran an article on this some years ago. The pictures were winsome - the classic shots of Englishmen in pith helmets overseeing large gangs of natives hauling improbably large gunboats on hawsers. Be offended if you will, but one has to love the chutzpah of colonialism ...