Congo river steamers
Encyclopedia
The Congo River is divided into three navigable parts, by seagoing ship to Matadi, where there is a wharf and port, a railway bypassing the mighty falls for 200 miles; and then a middle section of over 1000 miles from Leopoldville (Kinshasa
Kinshasa
Kinshasa is the capital and largest city of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The city is located on the Congo River....

) to Stanleyville (Kisangani
Kisangani
Kisangani is the capital of Orientale Province in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It is the 3rd largest urbanized city in the country and the largest of the cities that lie in the tropical woodlands of the Congo....

) where the Stanley Falls breaks the river. The upper section of the river is navigable to Elizabethville a measure of 400 miles. The large copper deposits of Katanga are conveyed from Elisabethville (Lumbumbashi). The Congo River was an open river in that it was free for all nations to use as per an 1885 international agreement and was tested by a Brit in the International Court in 1931.
The first river steamers on the Congo was two built in sections and hauled overland to the middle river by Henry Morton Stanley
Henry Morton Stanley
Sir Henry Morton Stanley, GCB, born John Rowlands , was a Welsh journalist and explorer famous for his exploration of Africa and his search for David Livingstone. Upon finding Livingstone, Stanley allegedly uttered the now-famous greeting, "Dr...

 the explorer in 1879. Stanley was instrumental in making the area the personal territory of Leopold II
Leopold II of Belgium
Leopold II was the second king of the Belgians. Born in Brussels the second son of Leopold I and Louise-Marie of Orléans, he succeeded his father to the throne on 17 December 1865 and remained king until his death.Leopold is chiefly remembered as the founder and sole owner of the Congo Free...

.

The Oxford Baptist Missionary Society and its chief agent Grenfell built the steamer Peace for evangelical work in the area in the 1884. Grenfell led
both in contact with the natives and charting and exploring the river system.
He would later built 2 larger steamers, one called Goodwill. The steamer Bernaert captured in a civil war of 1892.

Author Joseph Conrad steamed on one trip up the Congo and used the trip as informationn for his famous novel Heart of Darkness
Heart of Darkness
Heart of Darkness is a novella written by Joseph Conrad. Before its 1903 publication, it appeared as a three-part series in Blackwood's Magazine. It was classified by the Modern Library website editors as one of the "100 best novels" and part of the Western canon.The story centres on Charles...

.

Conrad was promised a job as a Congo River pilot through the influence of his distant cousin Marguerite Poradowska, who lived in Brussels and knew important officials of the Belgian company which exploited the Congo for its rubber. At this time the Congo, though nominally an independent state, the Congo Free State was virtually the personal property of Leopold II, king of the Belgians, who made a fortune out of it. Later, the appalling abuses involved in the naked colonial exploitation that went on in the Congo was explosed to public view, and international criticism compelled the setting up of a committee of inquiry in 1904. What Conrad saw in 1890 shocked him profoundly and shook his view of the moral basis of all exploring and trading in newly discovered countries and indeed of civilization in general.
As a result of the Belgian genocide and slavery visited on the Africans,
the Belgium congo was set up as a government colony in 1908. A portage railway was built from Matadi to Leopoldville. Others were built around Stanley Falls,
and on the rocky sections of the upper Congo. A Congo to Nile Railway was planned to connect Stanleyville with the Nile at Uganda. Over 100 steamers on the river by 1900. British and American missionary societies were sent to spread the gospel and monitor governments.

Mining companies were set up in the copper belt of Katanga Province
Katanga Province
Katanga Province is one of the provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Between 1971 and 1997, its official name was Shaba Province. Under the new constitution, the province was to be replaced by four smaller provinces by February 2009; this did not actually take place.Katanga's regional...

, and the Societe Maritime de Haut Congo was established. Railways radiated in a star pattern from
Katanga, lines to Angola, Zambia, and halfway to Leopoldville at Ilebo on the Kasai River. Later, ocean maritime empires Societe Maritime Belge and airlines, SABENA
Sabena
SABENA was the national airline of Belgium from 1923 to 2001, with its base at Brussels National Airport. After its bankruptcy in 2001, the newly formed SN Brussels Airlines took over part of SABENA's assets in February 2002, which then became Brussels Airlines...

 were formed to serve the colony.
A few boatnames—Brugesville, flandres, Milz, Deliverance, Henry Reed, Kigomi, Tadora
General Olsen, Brabant, Kitambo.

OTRACO was the office of transport or Belgian government shipping agency on the Congo River after 1936.

Gaston Eve comments on travelling by boat during his time in Brazzaville
during WWII with the Free French Forces. "The voyage on the Fondère was very pleasant. That paddle steamer was very well run, the food excellent served in a fine refectory. We had cabins but in general slept on the deck. The nights were very beautiful. On the journey we were able to admire the forest lining the river and saw many types of monkey in the trees alongside it. Some were enormous and all this was new."

D'Lynn Waldron who travelled through the Congo at the start of the crises in 1962 explained that 'Most of the river boats were tiny Victorian relics, half rusted away and painted the color of rust so it wouldn’t show. Many of the larger riverboats had been towed across the Atlantic after outliving their usefulness on the Mississippi [(Sic), One boat on the Congo was a copy of the Mississipi type; U.S. boats would not have made the sea voyage nor the impassable lower falls.] These were big, old-fashioned, flat-bottomed, stern wheelers that drew only a few feet of water."

Large paddle steamers were built by this agency OTRACO and worked
the river until the Civil War when boats were machine gunned and charges
dropped into their boilers.

Bretonnet, Vivi in French Congo
French Congo
The French Congo was a French colony which at one time comprised the present-day area of the Republic of the Congo, Gabon, and the Central African Republic...

 and Ubangi River
Ubangi River
The Ubangi River , also spelled Oubangui, is the largest right-bank tributary of the Congo River of Central Africa. It begins at the confluence of the Mbomou and Uele Rivers and flows west, then bends to the southwest and passes through Bangui, after which it flows south to the Congo at Liranga....

. The north bank of the river being an entirely separate french colony with their own boats.

River steamers ran until the 1980s, when the kleptocracy of Mobuto
crippled the country. Diesel pushers were put to work.

Up to 150 people were drowned when ferries collided on the river in 2010. US Kayaker eaten by crocodiles on Congo in 2010.

See also

  • George Grenfell
    George Grenfell
    George Grenfell was an Cornish missionary and explorer.-Early years:...

  • Transport in the Democratic Republic of the Congo
    Transport in the Democratic Republic of the Congo
    Ground transport in the Democratic Republic of Congo has always been difficult. The terrain and climate of the Congo Basin present serious barriers to road and rail construction, and the distances are enormous across this vast country...

  • Geoffrey Spicer-Simson
    Geoffrey Spicer-Simson
    Commander Geoffrey Basil Spicer-Simson DSO was a Royal Navy officer. He served in the Mediterranean, Pacific and Home Fleets...

  • The African Queen (disambiguation)
  • East African Railways
  • Fashoda Incident
    Fashoda Incident
    The Fashoda Incident was the climax of imperial territorial disputes between Britain and France in Eastern Africa. A French expedition to Fashoda on the White Nile sought to gain control of the Nile River and thereby force Britain out of Egypt. The British held firm as Britain and France were on...



Further Reading
  • Joseph Conrad Heart of Darkness
  • Barbara Kingsolver Poisonwood Bible
  • Blood River. Tim Butcher
  • Online Diary of Hershey Longebecker
  • Waldron, d'Lynn.“The Secret in the Heart of Darkness: the Sabotaged Independence of the Belgian Congo”

"Steam Across Africa" New York Times 1902.http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=F60B16FD345D12738DDDAD0994D1405B828CF1D3
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