chose to concentrate on spiritual rather than health-related matters. The arrival of the Chauncy Maples and Dr. Robert Howard produced a radical change in the level and quality of medical provision to the lakeside inhabitants. Howard quickly laid the foundation of a robust health system with the Chauncy Maples fulfilling a central role. By the 1930s many stations, including those on the periphery, had health clinics run by missionary nurses or by African assistants. With the advantage of details on local diseases gathered by other doctors in the area, mainly from the Scottish missions, Dr. Howard adopted an anti-malaria strategy, and in conjunction with colleagues at Blantyre mission, embarked on an anti-smallpox vaccination program. For a poorly resourced mission, the cost of maintaining the steamer required a strong focus on local provisioning. With a draught permitting access to all areas of the lake, the ship was largely self-sustaining, her steam engine powered by wood scavenged from the shore areas. But the matter of slave raiding was more problematic, requiring not only manpower for site security, but also an appreciation of the uneasy boundaries that lay between the worlds of evangelism, medicine and trade. Finding appropriately qualified crew prepared to accept low pay and the tribulations of life on the lake was one thing; the mission's unyielding insistence on celibacy among its European staff was an even greater recruitment challenge. Behind all this lay the tensions arising from the mission's intentional policy of overextension of its mission surrounding Lake Nyasa. The Chauncy Maples operated in the contradictory world of an evangelical mission which offered desperately needed medical support to the poor in an environment of political instability and unfettered imperial capitalism. Apart from a period of service during the First World War as a troop carrier and gunboat, the ship served the inhabitants of Nyasaland for half a century until 1953, when she was sold and converted into a trawler. In 1967 the Malawian government bought her, refitted her as a passenger and cargo ship and replaced her steam engine with a Crossley in-line diesel engine. Her steam engine is preserved in the Lake Malawi Museum at Mangochi. The ship is currently laid up at Monkey Bay. Controversies of European Christian missions Although work in the field of health was conducted out of the conviction that western medicine was good for Africans, it was not an entirely altruistic programme. The missionaries