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‘Put the helm hard over.’ Chuff-chuff-chuff went the
antique O & S engine with its saturated exhaust. ‘Hard
over! Hard over!’ Jim Hendrick’s voice now carried a sense
of urgency as the AFRICAN QUEEN moved out into the harbor under
steam for the first time since 1976. This was not Humphrey Bogart
issuing orders to Katharine Hepburn in C. S. Forrester’s saga
of the silver screen. No, it was the new owner of the AFRICAN
QUEEN, telling me how to avoid a shoal area in the Florida Keys.
Jim had recently acquired this historic steamboat of movie fame and
was determined to get it under steam again.
The 1950s was the end of that era of the big bands and motion
pictures that we could take the family to see without first
checking the Hays Office for an R or G rating. The Viet Nam
conflict had not infected our patriotism to the point where a good
war story could not command attention at the box office. The motion
picture African Queen was a story of World War I in East Africa and
ultimately the sinking of a German gunboat on Lake Victoria. Jim
Hendricks of Louisville, Kentucky, and Ocean Reef, is a Columbia
Law School graduate now retired from law practice, who has had the
singularly good fortune to be not only successful in his chosen
profession, but a lover of history, a Bogart buff and connoisseur
of fine old steam machinery.
It will be recalled that Rosie (Hepburn) was a missionary in
Uganda and Charlie Allnut (Bogart) the gin-soaked mining engineer
whose joint mission it was to single-handidly win that episode of
WW I in their part of the world by an improbable voyage aboard a
steam-powered riverboat on a tributary to Lake Victoria. When
Walter Huston began shooting the story on location in Uganda, he
needed an authentic river steamboat for the part. Just such a
vessel was available there in real life and this same 70-year-old
craft lives today in an auroa of nastalgia in another Bogart
locale, the one for the film Key Largo. In fact, the QUEEN often
rests atop her flatbed trailer not far from the Carribean Bar used
as the real life set for Key Largo.
The AFRICAN QUEEN underway at Ocean Reef, Florida. Jim Hendricks
is up forward along with Jerry Barner. The author stands his watch
as engineer while Lon Munsey can just be seen with head above the
gunwale while struggling with the fire. Barbara Hendricks is at the
tiller.
But, let’s get down to the steam historical details that we
are all interested in. The QUEEN was built in England around 1906
with a vertical fire tube boiler and a double acting single
cylinder steam engine in a 30′ long hull for use on the river
tributaries to Lake Victoria in East Africa. She was built to last
in this difficult service with riveted iron hull plates now showing
some signs of salt water corrosion pitting. She was provided with a
black mahogany fore deck and a seat in the stern for the helmsman.
Cargo, passengers chickens, people, what ever fared as best they
could be sharing space with boiler and engine. Somewhere along the
passage of time she has lost her original boiler and now has one
made by a State of Oregon pressure vessel fabricator to ASTM
standards. Her original engine too has been lost to time but the O
& S 6 x 6′ engine installed in a more recent refit is
authentic as to size and age. In her original freshwater service
area, it was satisfactory to feed the boiler with river water. For
this a duplex reciprocating pump had been provided. Now, however,
in sea water this is not possible so that she has been fitted with
a Pemberthy injector and the duplex pump converted to a bilge pump.
There is a 30-gallon fresh water tank now installed forward of the
boiler to provide boiler make-up water.
The Florida Keys are essentially arid coral islands thus Ocean
Reef Resort has its own reverse osmosis desalination plant. This
means that the boiler feed runs around 500 ppm of dissolved solids
but so far the boiler hasn’t complained. The fuel supply is
wood. Local wood is not the best that there is for firing a boiler.
The mangrove tree is the most prevalent but is really not suitable
and driftwood is to be avoided due to its salt content.
Another interesting aspect of this old timer is the propeller
shaft drive system. The engine which is rated at 150 rpm is not
directly connected to the screw propeller. Instead, there is a
step-up set of V-belt pulleys. It would appear that originally this
was a ‘rope’ drive since in 1906 we had not come upon the
extensive use of V-belts.
The turn of the century saw British expansion of its Empire into
East Africa and the building of the East African Railway from
Mombasa on the Indian Ocean some 600 miles inland through Nairobi
to Kisumu on Lake Victoria to open up Uganda to commerce. She was
already entrenched in Egypt and the Sudan, but entrance to the
upland and the source of the Nile had to be from the other coast.
In M. F. Hill’s book ‘The Permanent Way,’ are
descriptions of the importation of steam boats into the interior
over the meter gauge rail line. The AFRICAN QUEEN was one such boat
that survived until the 60s in cargo service on rivers such as the
Sio feeding Lake Victoria. There were a number of larger craft such
as the CLEMENT HILL (250 tons capacity) that carried inbound and
outbound traffic on the lake between developed harbors, but it was
little vessels such as the hero of our story that were so essential
to the development of the country. Cotton, coffee, hides and other
plantation products of Uganda reached transportation centers on the
lake by way of these little river steamboats.
Our story centers around an interlude in her career in 1951 with
the on-location filming of the motion picture of the same name.
After her thespian incursion she went back to mundane cuffing away
as a cargo hauler until Californian Fred Reeve had her shipped to
America and exposition service in San Francisco Harbor. Later, Hal
Bailey moved her to Oregon. At this point she got her new boiler
and was re-engined for tourist service on the Sun River. Then it
was the carnival circuit before coming to Ocala, Florida, where Jim
Hendricks found her. Now one can only hope that this will be her
home as an operating museum piece for those days when steam made
the world turn.
My association with the AFRICAN QUEEN came about by reading an
article in the Miami Herald while wintering on Long Key in the
Florida Keys. A follow-up phone call to Jim Hendricks brought out
the information that he was looking for technical help to get the
old girl working again. There were a thousand details to be handled
before she could again ply her element. Not the least of these was
the passing of U.S. Coast Guard inspections and certifications.
What’s to do about all of the paper work? Who had the drawings
on the boiler and piping? What did the Coast Guard require? But, by
systematically working the problem, the day finally arrived when
she was ready for trials.
There had been some dry land tests performed for the
authorities. The 225 psig hydro-test had been passed with flying
colors and a small fire had been lighted for the inspector while he
set and sealed the safety valve at 150 psig. However, the moment of
truth a run at sea had not yet been faced.
The boatyard crew had off loaded her from her trailer and set
her gently into her element. Not a drop of water was made. Every
fitting, plug and seam was tight. And so the first battle was won.
By now Lon Munsey had a fire going in the 8 horsepower boiler and
there was just enough warm-up expansion air to give the whistle a
toot much to the enjoyment of the dockside crowd that had gathered
to watch the proceedings.
A watched pot never boils and a fire tube boiler seems to take
forever to heat. Soon, though, about twenty pounds was showing and
I opened the steam line to the induced draft in the stack. That
helped the fire a bit but this was to prove to be one of the
problems of the day. If the Keys have no water, they have even less
of that specie of wood that is suitable for firing a boiler. It
took forever to get up to fifty pounds pressure, or so it seemed.
That was enough, however, to try out the engine but, of course, not
enough to operate the injector. Actually, no one knew which valve
position was forward or reverse at that point. But, with a
3/4-glass showing we decided to try out the engine while still tied
in the dock. The first try proved to be reverse. OK, now we know.
At that point Jerry Barner, who has been around boats since old
Caesar was a puppy, took his switchblade knife out and carved a
great big ‘F’ on the quadrant. By now the cylinder was warm
enough to close the drains but it didn’t really matter. We were
out of steam. The fact that the engine exhaust into the chimney
with the sweetest chuffing sound that any steam man could love
didn’t do a thing to the draft. We had to make it with the
blower or nothing. Now, this was not really a fault of the boiler
but was due to the quality of the fuel.
The AFRICAN QUEEN underway among the mangrove bounded waterways
of the Florida Keys reminiscent of her days in East Africa and the
River Sio.
With that, Jim’s wife came struggling up with a gunny sack
of scrap wood from a local construction project and that got us up
to enough pressure to run the injector and so Jim ordered,
‘Cast off all lines’, and we were on our own.
By some type of mutual agreement, I got elected to handle the
tiller and put the old girl on some sort of course. Jim had her in
reverse and we backed out of the slip as majestically as if we had
been in that other famous Queen ‘Mary.’ Someone even
remembered to blow the whistle and a great cheer went up from the
throng that had grown measurably since we had started operations. A
news photographer’s boat scurried out of the way as we backed
out as did every other boat that saw us coming that day good
judgement.
A fixed screw boat as compared to an outboard does not respond
to the rudder while reversing. We were getting too close for
comfort to a beautiful yacht tied nearby and Jim closed the
throttle and swung the quadrant to ‘ahead’ and opened the
throttle so I could steer. Horrors! Dead center!
Left: Looking forward from the helmsman’s
station the view is blocked by engine a boiler.
Right: The main engine is a 6′ square O &
S single cylinder masterpiece of the engine builder’s
craft.
Now, you will recall from the film, Bogie was always kicking the
engine. We soon found out why. It is provided with a flywheel that
looks like the wheel from a very large valve. The smooth rounded
rim is a hand hold to grab on to and move the engine off dead
center. I abandoned the tiller as useless and Lon momentarily gave
up his battle with firing and we both made a dive for the flywheel
to get her off dead center before the stern carved its initials in
the white topsides of the fast approaching yacht. With that Jim
nonchalantly opened the throttle and we sailed out into the main
part of the harbor in style.
My relief was short-lived for that was when the urgent order was
given, ‘Helm hard over,’ we were headed for a pile of rocks
marking the entrance to one of the channels. Soon that problem was
solved and I settled back to rest my laurels on the stern seat with
visions of Rosie sitting there clutching her broad-brimmed hat that
sheltered her against the equatorial sun. Now that was 100%
Hollywood. Sitting in that seat was comfortable enough but in no
way could one steer from that position unless they had a
side-viewing periscope like Lindberg had to see around the mammoth
gas tank of the Spirit of St. Louis, for the view ahead was
completely blocked by engine and boiler. Another myth gone as with
the morning mist from the lake.
Once we all got the hang of our jobs things began to run
smoothly and soon we were pulling alongside a pier so family and
friends could come aboard with a reasonable degree of safety.
Although the engine is rated at only 8 horsepower, it appeared
capable of driving the vessel at full hull speed. In a displacement
hull, as this one is, 8 miles per hour is probably all that should
be expected and we were obviously approaching this with only about
70 pounds pressure. Once a good grade of fuel is found for her then
125 pounds operation should be achieved. Cole Walters suggested it
be converted to burn LPG. I suggested the purchase of a few bags of
steam coal, but Jim Hendricks is not about to lose one whit of
authenticity. She’ll run on wood even if her flues have to be
scrubbed after each trip. I think that I secretly agree.
