This African Queen was a 30-foot steam boat built of riveted sheet iron in 1912 in the United Kingdom for service in Africa on the Victoria Nile and Lake Albert where the movie was filmed in 1950.

She spent most of her first 50 years in the waters of the Ruki River in the northern Democratic Republic of Congo where she was used to transport hunters, mercenaries, and cargo.

[2] The other African Queen was built in 1950 for the film and was discovered by Yank Evans, a Patagonian mechanical engineer who had come across what was left of the vessel while working on the roads in Murchison Falls National Park, Uganda in 1984.

[3] Cam McLeay purchased the Nile African Queen after hearing her story and set to finishing the restorations and getting the boat's original steam engine functioning and in the water.

[3] McLeay and his team rebuilt the African Queen's century-old Brady steam engine and replating the hull and replacing over 100 pipes, sourcing parts mostly from the UK but also from within Uganda.