wagon fitted with Sentinel wheels, to be hauled overland by 450 Ngoni tribesmen for through uncharted malarial land to the East African Rift. The other parts of the ship were man-handled or carried on the heads of men and women over difficult terrain and across river beds: they averaged only a day. David Livingstone David Livingstone, the first European to reach the lake and an evangelist for steamboat missions, had made much quicker progress in 1859, claiming much of the area surrounding the lake as part of the British Empire, forming the colony of Nyasaland. Although Portugal took control of the eastern shores of the lake, the islands of Likoma and Chizumulu were colonised by Scottish missionaries and, as a result, became part of Nyasaland rather than Portuguese East Africa (now Mozambique). Reassembly Re-assembly of the Chauncy Maples proved to be even more arduous than the journey—in error, the part numbers had been stamped on each section prior to the galvanising process, making the task for the African engineers even more complex. It took two years to re-assemble; the vessel was finally launched on 6 June 1901 and named after Bishop Chauncy Maples, an Anglican missionary, later Bishop of Nyasaland. In 1895, while on the way to take up his duties, his boat capsized during a storm on Lake Nyasa and he drowned because of the weight of his cassock. Hospital ship, missionary school and the extinction of the slave trade Missionaries brought to Africa far more than religion and the UMCA had a very clear vision for their £9,000 investment. The ship had three overt tasks—to give the lake a hospital ship, a missionary school and an emergency refuge from Arab slave traders. In reality, the goals were of more global importance; as one of the mission's founding supporters, the Bishop of Oxford, Samuel Wilberforce, had made clear, the prime task was "the work of civilising commerce, the extinction of the slave-trade and, if possible, the colonisation of Africa". Lake Nyasa was a long way from the sea, and initial progress with medical provision at Likoma was erratic. The programme had been introduced in 1894, during the brief stay of a UMCA physician. His replacement was the Rev John Edward Hine, who although also a medical doctor was ultimately little interested in this aspect of his duties. When Hine was appointed Bishop of Eastern Equatorial Africa in 1896 he