Wintertime project :off topic

A handful of years back, Wolfgang posted a picture of a rapid
somewhere on some river, and within a matter of days, the collective
research skills of this group identified the river, rapid and
timeframe of the photo.

Recently, I've become a bit obsessed with another similar search. If
anyone wants to get involved, here are the relevant facts. Its been
pretty interesting...almost addicting, actually.

As you all know, Henry Morton Stanley was the explorer who 'found' Dr.
Livingstone, then later explored the Congo and opened up the region
for exploitation. He was quite the self-promoter, so much of the
historical material about him has a 'PT Barnum' type of hysteria about
it, and separating fact from hype can be a challenge.

A few weeks back, some model ship builder in England contacted me. He
had read my 'Life In Congo' posts, and had a request of me (which I
could not fulfill as I am no longer in Congo). But it uncovered a
popular misconception and started a chain of events of historical
value.

When Stanley explored the Congo, the majority of his journey was in a
boat called the "Lady Alice". The story behind this boat is
fascinating; from her name, to how she was made, modified,
transported, utilized, and eventually abandoned on a hillside in what
was to become Leopoldville (and later Kinshasa). This boat is as
significant to the development of Africa as the Mayflower or Nina,
Pinta and Santa Maria are to the Americas. So the model builder wants
to make a scale model of this boat.

Yet not a trace of this boat exists. And although there are abundant
sketches, documents, photos, woodcuts and even artifacts, no one is
quite sure what she looks like, or how she was held together. And much
of the reality about her is lost in the fog of misinformation.

But there are some tantalizing clues out there, and tons of source
material available for those willing to do some googling.

The big questions: what did the boat look like, and how was it held
together?

Here is a timeline that Bill (the model builder) and I have put
together, including modern misinformation.

Stanley's first exploration was to find Livingstone. When Livingstone
died a few years later, Stanley was hired to complete Livingstone's
research to find the source of the Nile, to map the shores of lake
Tanganyika, and to find out if the Luluaba river was the headwaters of
the Nile, or the Congo. Knowing that exploring the Lake would require
a durable craft, Stanley hired boatbuilder James Messenger of
Teddington, England in 1875 to build him a 40 foot boat that could be
taken apart into 5 floatable sections. He named the boat "the Lady
Alice" after his betrothed. In his personal correspondence, Stanley
tells how he emphasized that the sections could be no more than 120
pounds each, as they had to be carried through the jungles of Africa.
He included a sketch of the boat in his book "through the Dark
Continent" on page 4, however this is NOT the boat, but Stanley's
illustration that he proposed to Messenger, as some features are
inconsistent with other materials. It is known that Messenger modified
and improved Stanley's plans. What is interesting is that Stanley
wrote this book AFTER his journey, so its curious that he would not
have drawn the boat accurately, but we will come back to that.

Stanley travelled to Zanzibar to start his journey, and the Lady Alice
arrived a few weeks after he did. This is important: many people in
England were fascinated with Stanley and his new expedition, and there
was much press about Messenger building the new boat. But when the
boat arrived in Zanzibar, Stanley discovered that the sections were
far too big and heavy, and he was about to abandon the boat when he
found a local woodworker who cut the sections in half, making them
lighter and smaller, and modified the boat by shortening it to 24
feet. However, no one in England knew this, so many of the historical
images you can find today are inaccurate, showing the larger boat.

Stanley's men carried the Alice up to Lake Tanganyika where they
'bolted it together' and used it to map the lake and prove it was the
headwaters of the Nile, then they disassembled it, carried it over to
the Luluaba, and floated down the Congo river for the next 9 months,
carrying the boat around the falls in Stanleyville (Kisengani). When
he reached the Isanglia rapids (Kinshasa/Leopoldville), he was nearing
the end of a very traumatic 999-day journey, where he had lost almost
half his African porters and all of his white compatriots (all except
one, who drowned a week later), had many, many battles with natives,
were fighting starvation and were desperate to get finished with their
lives. The Lady Alice served as his home base for the entire journey,
and his journals are filled with effusive praise and flowery prose
about her merits, how she saves his life, and how important she has
become to him. And how much easier it is to traverse Africa in a boat
rather than on foot through the hostile jungle.

When he gets to the falls of Isanglia, at a place calls "Stanley
Pool", he has to abandon the boat, so he has her taken apart and
hauled up onto to some rocks above waterline 'to bleach and rot in the
sun'. He describes this parting with a heavy heart, and you can feel
his sense of loss. The he and the rest of his crew start the 200 mile
walk to Banana, a town on the coast (200 miles: you KNOW they sure
missed the boat!) where they are rescued on the verge of starvation
and he returns to England a hero, knowing that he will never return to
Africa again, and almost certainly with thoughts of his beloved Lady
Alice lying on the hilltop, forever abandoned.

Here's where it gets interesting:

He gets intercepted on his way back to England in Marseilles by King
Leopold who wants to hire him to return to Africa, build a road to the
interior, and set up trade on the river. He refuses, returns to
England where he finds that his betrothed Alice has married an
American industrialist. Later in life, she tells how he told her what
kept him alive and pushing onward during his journey was the boat she
was named after, and how he felt her 'spirit' in the vessel. He also
finds out that England isn't interested in developing the Congo, so he
contacts Leopold and takes him up on his offer.

Less than 2 years later, he finds himself back in Banana, building a
road up to Stanley Pool! Better than anyone on earth, he knows the
importance of having a boat on the Congo River above Isanglia to open
up trade, and he knows that the Lady Alice is sitting there in pieces.
I cannot imagine that a day does not go by where he does not think of
this. However, Leopold had put a gag order on Stanley's journal
writing, so I cannot find any written documentation about his thoughts
on this. What is known, however, is that a year after Stanley built
his road, different groups under the auspices of Leopold started
trucking steamboats up the road to Stanley Pool, where they were
assembled and used for shipping up and down the Congo. The vessel that
Joseph Conrad captained only 4 years after Stanley finished his road
(and later played a featured role in his novel Heart of Darkness) was
one of these multisectioned steamboats. But for about a year, at
least, the Lady Alice would have been the only large boat in Stanley
Pool. And I can imagine the one of the first things he did when he
arrived back at Stanley Pool was to have an emotional reunion to this
boat, and be filled with angst at how the real Alice dumped him one
year before he returned to England.

A few more years later, Stanley is asked to do yet another African
exploration to 'rescue' Emin Pasha from the Sudan. Woodcuts exist that
show the three boats Stanley used to go upriver...one is a metal
hulled multisession boat called the AIA, about 30 feet long, not the
Alice. There is never again any mention of the Lady Alice in any
literature anywhere that I can find.

Jump ahead a hundred years.

Congo is well developed, and a historical museum is built in Kinshasa
on Mt Ngaliema, right above the rapids at Insanglia. Amongst the
artifacts there is a statue of Stanley (first governor of Congo) and a
boat he used 'in his exploration of Congo'. Later, the government
collapses, Mt Ngaliema is cordoned off as a military outpost and for
40 years, no one can get inside the remnants of the museum. Meanwhile.
Mobuto starts a process of "Zaireination" to cast off the history of
colonialization, and Stanley's statue is hauled down and the
artifacts, especially the boat, are left to rot. Things fall apart.

Now, this year, the new stability in Congo has resulted in access to
the derelict museum being opened. Some online research shows that the
popular assumption is that the boat in the museum is the Lady Alice,
hence the request from Bill the model builder to go look at it, take
measurements, and find out how the sections were attached. Although
I'm no longer there, I was able to find some recent photos of people
posing in front of it, and the boat in the museum is the AIA, from
Stanley's last journey, and is not the Alice. Unfortunately, there is
a ton of misinformation out there claiming that 'Stanley's boat, the
Lady Alice, which he used to explore the Congo River' is weathering
away in Kinshasa. This is not the case; as far as I can tell, the Lady
Alice is long gone. Whether her hardware is lying among some rocks
above Isanglia, or if Stanley repaired and used her and eventually
left her elsewhere is unknown.

Anyway, that's where we are now. We are looking at covers for
magazines from the 1880s, photos from Stanley's own camera in a museum
in Belguim, writings from him after the expedition, and source
materials...yet we cannot find any definitive info that shows a) what
the Lady Alice looked like or b) how Messenger bolted the sections
together.


This is of course a barebones overview, but I have tried to stick to
just documented facts. If anyone has a passion about old boats and
research, I'd be fascinated if they could come across either
Messenger's boatbuilding plans for the Alice, or some very clear
pictures or even sketches Stanley made of her hull.

--riverman