The African Queen

The African Queen is a 1935 novel written by English author C. S. Forester. It was adapted into the 1951 film of the same name. Plot summary The story opens in August/September 1914. Rose Sayer, a 33-year-old British woman, is the companion and housekeeper of her brother Samuel Sayer, an Anglican missionary in German East Africa (present-day Tanzania). World War I has recently begun, and the German military commander of the area has conscripted all the natives; the village is deserted, and only Rose and her brother, who is dying, remain. Samuel dies during the night and Rose is alone. That day a London Cockney named Allnutt arrives at the village. Allnutt is the mechanic and skipper of the African Queen, a steam-powered launch, owned by a Belgian mining corporation, that plies the upper reaches of the Ulanga River. Allnutt's two-man crew has deserted him because of the rumours of war and conscription. Allnutt buries Rose's brother and brings Rose to the African Queen, where they consider what they should do. The African Queen is well-stocked with tinned food, and carries a two-hundredweight cargo of blasting gelignite. It also holds two large tanks of oxygen and hydrogen. Rose is inflamed with patriotism, and also filled with the desire to avenge insults that the Germans had piled on her brother. It occurs to her that the main German defence against a British attack by water in the area is a gunboat, Königin Luise, which guards the fictional Lake Wittelsbach into which the Ulanga feeds. She asks Allnutt if he can make the gelignite into a makeshift torpedo. Allnutt replies that that is not possible, but after some thought, he concludes that by loading the gelignite inside the emptied tanks, putting the tanks into the bow of the launch, and rigging a detonator, they could turn the African Queen itself into a sort of large torpedo. Allnutt is inclined to laugh off the idea, but he gives in to Rose's greater strength of will and the two of them set off down the Ulanga, Rose steering and Allnutt maintaining the launch's ancient, balky, wood-burning steam engine. The descent to the lake poses three main problems: passing the German-held town of Shona; navigating some heavy rapids and cataracts; and getting through the river delta. After many days on the river, they come close to Shona, and Allnutt's nerve fails. He refuses to take the launch under fire, anchors in a backwater, and gets drunk on gin.