The Chauncy Maples is "the oldest ship afloat in Africa", according to Wikipedia - an assertion clearly at odds (at least in part) with the photo I took today.
What is corroborated by other sources though is that she was built in 1899 in Glasgow by Alley & McLellan, a firm who specialised in building vessels that were then dismantled into kit form to support "the far reaches of the British Empire". She was commissioned by the Universities Mission to Central Africa (UCMA), designed by Henry Brunel, the son of IKB and named after an Anglican Bishop who drowned in Lake Malawi.
The 150 ton boat was disassembled into 3,481 parcels, transported to Mozambique, barged up river and then carried on people's heads for the last 100 km. The boiler, which weighed 11 tons, was dragged overland by 450 of the local Ngoni tribesmen and the process of reassembly took almost two years - so she wasn't launched until 1901.
The tasks set by the UCMA for the Chauncy Maples were that she was to act as a hospital ship, missionary school and emergency refuge from Arab slave traders - amazing to think that slave traders were still around at the turn of the 20th century!
Having served these and other purposes over the last 100 years or so, the boat has been out of action for most of the last ten years and the objective of the current overhaul brings things full circle - to restore her for use as a mobile clinic to serve fishing communities on Lake Malawi with no access to healthcare facilities - see www.chauncymaples.org