Ships on the inland sea of Central Africa
The Rhodesian and Central African Annual, 1954
Fifty years ago Lake Nyasa and the Shire River positively teemed with shipping. Between 1895 and 1900 there were about 35 ships using these great internal waterways into, and in. Central Africa. They were operated by eight different shipping firms and varied from shallow draught stern-wheelers to paddle steamers and sailing ships, with quite a number of single- and twin-screw vessels. The paddle steamers were often described as “ side wheelers” to distinguish them from the stern-wheelers. They carried goods and passengers to and from Nyasaland. North-eastern Northern Rhodesia and even Southern Tanganyika. Following upon Livingstone's discovery of Lake Nyasa and Rank ine's discovery of the Kongone mouth of the Zambesi, these water routes were the main entrances to Central Africa until the railway was completed.
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Good News Monument (Mbala)
This site, which lies on the Lufubu (or Lofu). River some three kilometres from its mouth into Lake Tanganyika, is not served by a motor road and the only convenient means of access is by boat.
The monument was erected in 1945 by Robert Yule to commemorate the launching on this site of the Good News, the first steamship to sail on Lake Tanganyika.
The story of the Good News goes back to 1880 when E. C. Hore of the London Missionary Society was searching for a site at the southern end of Lake Tanganyika on which to assemble a steel steam-powered vessel for use by his Society. Hore found Niamkolo (see page ) ‘in every way a desirable locality’ but the area was so disturbed by Arab slave raiders that he considered it impracticable to assemble the boat there and chose the Lufubu site.
A most interesting account of the assembling of the Good News is given in Alfred J. Swann’s book Fighting the Slave Hunters in Central Africa, published in London in 1910. The ship was originally built in England, delivered to Quelimane at the mouth of the Zambezi and sailed to the northern end of Lake Malawi, porterages being required on the Shire River. At Karonga it was dismantled and carried in sections overland to Lake Tanganyika, a distance of over four hundred kilometres. The boat-building party reached the Lufubu in July, 1883, and the first sections of the Good News arrived in September. The vessel was launched in 1885.
The Good News remained in service for many years. Her hull is now beached at Kituta Bay, east of Mpulungu, and her propeller is preserved in the Tanganyika Victoria Memorial Institute, Mbala.
The Shire River
The Rhodesian and Central African Annual, 1954
Nyasaland's largest river, and the sole outlet from Lake Nyasa, the Shire River (pronounced Sheeray) divides the southern end of the Protectorate as it flows down the gradually diminishing southern extremity of the Great Rift Valley of East Africa which stretches from Northern Kenya to the Zambezi Valley.
This great river was the main route into Nyasaland from the East Coast from the days of Dr. Livingstone until the time of the completion of the railway to Beira in 1908, and is now the third potential source of hydro-electric power being investigated in Central Africa. The initial surveys of the Shire Valley project are being carried out by teams of experts covering the whole of the valley from the southern tip of Lake Nyasa to the border at Port Herald, and are taking account of every aspect of this great scheme for the control and utilisation of the waters of Lake Nyasa and the Shire River.