The original version of The African Queen written by C. S. Forester and serialised in the News Chronicle in 1934 was very different from the one associated with the film. In this Rose and Allnut are planning to attack a German cruiser named Dortmund (loosely based on the SMS Königsberg), with the launch sailing down the river to attack it in the river delta.
In the book the The German gunboat Königin Luisa (referred to by hero Charlie Allnutt as the Louisa) is based on the Kingani, a German gunboat sunk on Lake Tanganyika and to a certain extent the events portrayed in the film are based on the dramatic naval operation carried out by the Royal Navy, but the events described in the book bear little resemblance to the true historical events.
The book was subsequently made into a film, the 1951 classic The African Queen, starring Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn. The gunboat used in the filming was played by the steam-tug Buganda on Lake Victoria, which was used for the long shots. The film brought a certain notoriety to the Götzen or Liemba. Like its real life counterpart, the Luisa ended up at the bottom of Lake Tanganyika, following a collision with the torpedo-rigged bow of the partially submerged African Queen near the end of the film.
Read more about this topic: MV Liemba
Famous quotes containing the word african:
“A tanned skin is something more than respectable, and perhaps olive is a fitter color than white for a man,—a denizen of the woods. “The pale white man!” I do not wonder that the African pitied him.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)