African Queen Canal Cruise, Key Largo

The African Queen is the boat used in the 1951 movie The African Queen starring Humprey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn. It is located in Key Largo, Florida. On February 18, 1992, it was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places.HistoryThe boat was built of riveted sheet iron in 1912 in the United Kingdom for service in Africa on the Victoria Nile and Lake Albert where the movie was filmed in 1950. Originally named the Livingstone, she was built for the British East Africa Railway and used from 1912 to 1968. It spent most of its first 50 years operating in the waters of the Ruki River in the northern Democratic Republic of Congo where she was used to transport a mixture of hunters, mercenaries and cargo.According to an article on its 2012 restoration, it was built by Lytham Shipbuilding and engineering Co, as evidenced by the boiler plate and Lancashire records.The boat was found in Cairo, Egypt in the 1970s, with coal still in its bilges. Purchased and shipped to the United States, it has had a succession of owners and is currently held in trust. It was refurbished in 2012, including installation of an interior steel hull frame and new boiler, and restored to service as a tourist boat.

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