Chauncy Maples

Lake Malawi's Hospital Ship

The ship

The 150-ton steamship Chauncy Maples was commissioned in 1898 by the British Universities' Mission to Central Africa. Designed by Henry Brunel, the son of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, she was built in Glasgow by Alley & McClellan, at a cost of £9,000. She was then disassembled into 3,481 parts.

The ship's 'Abbott' boiler was built in Newark, Nottinghamshire, and weighed 11 tons. It was transported in one piece on a special carriage fitted with traction engine wheels and shipped to Portuguese East Africa.

The boiler was towed on a barge up the Zambezi River and then hauled overland by 450 Ngoni tribesmen for 64 miles. Up steep hills and across river beds, they averaged three miles a day. The other parts of the ship were carried on the heads of men and women.

History

Unfortunately, when the parts of the hull were galvanised in Glasgow, the parts numbering system was hidden, so the engineers in Malawi had to work out a huge jig-saw to re-assemble the ship. In 1901, two years after leaving Britain, the Chauncy Maples was successfully reassembled and launched on Lake Nyasa (now Malawi). She had three purposes: a missionary school; an emergency refuge from Arab slave traders; and a hospital ship.

During the First World War she was commandeered to serve as a troop carrier and naval gunboat. After the Universities Mission to Central Africa sold her to the Malawi government in 1953, she became a passenger and cargo vessel.

The past and present

During her lifetime the Chauncy Maples has had several renovations, the most recent in 1967 when she was refitted as a passenger and cargo vessel, with accommodation for a crew of ten.

She is constructed with a vertical stem, raked stern, raised forecastle and poop deck aft, complete main deck, boat deck and split level aft deck. Currently there is a large cargo hold on the foredeck, which will contain refrigerators for vaccines. She has a single propeller plant, single rudder, working cargo winch and working capstan. The two lifeboats used for moving passengers and cargo from open shores, are missing. The davits are currently abeam, but will be moved to the bow.

The future

The Chauncy Maples has a shallow draft so can access all relevant areas of the lakeshore. She is of sufficient size to carry both a crew and a medical team.

The hull is made of riveted steel and when surveyed in 1992 there was no sign of major damage. A survey was carried out in May 2009 under the supervision of noted South African marine architect Peter Volschenk. His report identified many items that will be needed to restore the ship but noted that "The vessel hull and superstructure is in remarkably good condition and shows very little, if any, signs of decay or structural fatigue. It is very viable to get up to another 30 years service out of Chauncy Maples' structure".

The ship was originally equipped with a steam engine, fuelled by wood collected from the lake shore. In 1967 this was replaced with an in-line Crossley diesel engine fitted with a reduction gear and a fixed propeller plant. Although this engine is still in the vessel, it no longer meets modern environmental requirements. It will be replaced with a more efficient CAT 3406C DITA diesel engine, rated 346bkw @ 2100rpm, which can run on fuel with a jatropha bio-diesel admixture.