African Queen – Article by Tim Farrar – Photographs courtesy of Frédéric Lepron
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Welcome To The Eye Magazine Directory
African Queen – Article by Tim Farrar – Photographs courtesy of Frédéric Lepron
Like many ageing Hollywood film stars, she’s had a facelift. The star in question is the ‘grand old lady’ of the waters, who found fame in the 1951 film the African Queen starring Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn.
In John Huston’s First World War adventure film, Bogart’s rugged Canadian boat captain Charlie Allnut finds himself piloting the steam boat in German East Africa in the company of staid British missionary Rose Sayer (Katherine Hepburn). In the original novel by C.S. Forester, the river involved is the Ulanga, not the Nile. The pair negotiate crocodiles, rapids and German soldiers as they head for an unnamed lake where they mount an ambitious plan to sink a German gun boat. The film won Bogart the Oscar for best actor and was nominated for a further three prizes in 1952.
The African Queen was one of two boats used in the movie of the same name. It was filmed in the Belgian Congo on a tributary of the Congo River, and on the Nile in the Murchison Falls National Park in Uganda. Two boats were utilised, one in each location. One of the boats (the Congo River Boat) is now located in Key Largo, Florida and in 1992 was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places. The other remained in Uganda and still remains the true Queen of the Nile.
This Queen’s story can be traced back over a hundred years, from her origins being built in a small shipyard in the North West of England as a steam launch. She was owned by the British East Africa Railway Company in Uganda and she, in partnership with a larger vessel, the SAMUEL BAKER, a side paddle steamer built in 1909 for the Crown Agents for the Colonies, Uganda opened up a service on Lake Albert, which at that time formed the the international frontier between Uganda and the Congo. Records show that she was still working in 1928, at the time to occasionally carry tourists and hunting parties. She remained in the service of the British East Africa Company until she was discovered in 1951 by John Hoesill (art director of the African Queen) on the shores of Lake Albert, whilst he was looking for a boat for the movie, he gave her a makeover for her big screen debut.
Following the movie, she went back into service and remained in the employ of the British East Africa Company operating on the river Nile under her original name the SS Murchison. It was during this time our ‘Queen’ had a ‘brief encounter’ with the author Ernest Hemingway, who in 1954 famously crashed his chartered plane in the wilds close to the Murchison Falls. After surviving the night in the bush, a badly shaken Hemingway and his wife Mary made their way to a rocky outcrop, where they saw the approach of a sightseeing launch, the SS Murchison, which was carrying a party celebrating a golden wedding. Hemingway was delighted to discover this was the very boat used in the film, and best of all, for Hemingway it boasted “An excellent refrigerator containing Tusker beer and several brands of ale’. The ‘Queen’ took Hemingway and Mary to Butiaba on the shores of Lake Albert, where they boarded a rescue plane, which also famously crashed and burned on the take off, but miraculously all aboard escaped unhurt. But once again the Queen made world headlines following her encounter with the famous novelist.
Little is known of what happened to her beyond this point, other than she remained in the employ of the British East Arica Company and then passed into the ownership of the Uganda National Parks, until 1984 when a Patagonian Engineer (Yank Evans) found her whilst working on the roads in the Murchison Falls National Park.
At the time she had fallen into disrepair and was lying rotting away, her steel hull was rusting below the water line and much of the wood had been eaten by termites. When Evans enquired about her, he learnt from the locals that she was the ‘African Queen’ so after agreeing to pay $1 for the boat from the Uganda National Parks, Evans trucked her to Entebbe and restored her with his son Billy. It was a labour of love.
In the 1990’s the fully restored African Queen was working again, this time running boat trips on Lake Victoria, but in 1997, Evans left for Kenya and took the Queen with him. She remained there covered in Tarp in his garden until 2010 when she was discovered by New Zealander Cam McCleay, who at the time was looking for an authentic African boat. So, after spending over 10 years as a garden trailer in Nairobi, the Queen returned home to Uganda and was once again lovingly restored and put back into service on the river Nile as a tourist cruiser, where she would steam up the river and relive some of her glory years.
But once again, following the owner’s departure from Uganda, the Queen was left to rot by the shores of Lake Victoria, waiting for someone to come along and breathe life back into her.
This time her saviour came in the form of Bruce Martin, who owns and operates lodges in Murchison and Lake Albert, the Queen had come full circle, she was coming home.
Over the last few months, Bruce with the dedicated support of Tim Rogers has lovingly restored her back to her very best. The restoration was done with attention to detail retaining the original parts and making sure that everything remained true to her original design. She was finally ready to sail again in late July and it was fitting that her first “shakedown cruise’ was a return to Entebbe Sailing Club where she was celebrated with a toast of Gordon’s Gin, which was a happy reminder of her history, as in the movie Katherine Hepburn’s character pours Humphrey Bogart’s entire crate of Gordon’s bottles into the river and floats away from the empties!
