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The Congo River is divided into three navigable parts, by seagoing ship to Matadi, where there is a wharf and port, a rail bypassing the mighty falls for 200 miles; and then a middle section of over 1000 miles from Kinshasa to Kisangani where the Boyoma Falls breaks the river. The upper section of the river is partially navigable to Lubumbashi, a measure of 1000 miles[citation needed] . The large copper deposits of Katanga are conveyed from Lubumbashi. The Congo River was an open river in that it was free for all nations to use as per an 1885 international agreement, which was tested by an Oscar Chinn, a British national, in the International Court in 1931.[citation needed]
The first river steamers on the Congo were two built in sections and hauled overland to the middle river by Henry Morton Stanley the explorer in 1879. Stanley was instrumental in making the area the personal territory of Leopold II.[1]
The Oxford Baptist Missionary Society and its chief agent George Grenfell built the steamer Peace for evangelical work in the area in the 1884.[2] Grenfell led both in contact with the natives and charting and exploring the river system. He would later build 2 larger steamers, one called Goodwill.
Conrad was promised a job as a Congo River pilot through the influence of his distant cousin Marguerite Poradowska, who lived in Brussels and knew important officials of the Belgian company which exploited the Congo for its rubber[citation needed] . At this time the Congo, though nominally an independent state, the Congo Free State was the personal property of Leopold II, King of the Belgians, who made a fortune out of it. Later, the appalling abuses involved in the naked colonial exploitation that went on in the Congo Free State were exposed to public view, and international criticism compelled the setting up of a committee of inquiry in 1904[citation needed] . What Conrad saw in 1890 shocked him profoundly and shook his view of the moral basis of all exploring and trading in newly discovered countries and indeed of civilization in general.
As a result of Belgian outrage at the violence brought to the Congo by Leopold II, Belgium reluctantly annexed the Congo Free State as the Belgian Congo in 1908. A portage railway, the Matadi–Kinshasa Railway was built from Matadi to Leopoldville. Other railways were built around Stanley Falls, and on the rocky sections of the upper Congo. A Congo to Nile Railway was planned to connect Stanleyville with the Nile at Uganda. Over 100 steamers on the river by 1900. British and American missionary societies were sent to spread the gospel and monitor governments[citation needed] .
Mining companies were set up in the copper belt of Katanga Province, and the Societe Maritime de Haut Congo was established. Railways radiated in a star pattern from Katanga, with lines to Angola, Zambia, and halfway to Leopoldville at Ilebo on the Kasai River. Later, ocean maritime empires Compagnie Maritime Belge and airlines, SABENA were formed to serve the colony.
Names of the riverboats included: Brugesville, Flandres, Milz, Deliverance, Henry Reed, Kigomi, Tadora, General Olsen, Brabant, and Kitambo. The steamer Bernaert was captured in a civil war of 1892.
OTRACO was the office of transport or Belgian government shipping agency on the Congo River after 1936.[citation needed]
"The voyage on the Fondère was very pleasant. That paddle steamer was very well run, the food excellent served in a fine refectory. We had cabins but in general slept on the deck. The nights were very beautiful. On the journey we were able to admire the forest lining the river and saw many types of monkey in the trees alongside it. Some were enormous and all this was new."
D'Lynn Waldron, who traveled through the Congo at the start of the crises in 1962, explained[citation needed] that:
"Most of the river boats were tiny Victorian relics, half rusted away and painted the color of rust so it wouldn’t show. Many of the larger riverboats had been towed across the Atlantic after outliving their usefulness on the Mississippi [(Sic), One boat on the Congo was a copy of the Mississippi type; U.S. boats would not have made the sea voyage nor the impassable lower falls.] These were big, old-fashioned, flat-bottomed, stern wheelers that drew only a few feet of water."
Large paddle steamers were built by the OTRACO agency and worked the river until the Civil War when boats were machine gunned and charges dropped into their boilers[citation needed] .
Bretonnet, Vivi in French Congo and Ubangi River. The north bank of the river was an entirely separate French colony with their own boats[citation needed] .
River steamers ran until the 1980s, when the kleptocracy of Mobutu crippled the country. They were replaced by diesel pushers[citation needed]
The early dispersal of the HIV virus was aided by river travel—an infected passenger unwittingly carried the virus downriver from the French Congo to Leopoldville in the first two decades of the twentieth century.[The disease originated as SIV in monkeys in Cameroon where a hunter was infected by blood to blood contact. He then travelled overland to French Congo. Either he or another person contracted then the disease and it subsequently travelled onto the Belgian Congo by steamer. From there the pandemic slowly grew.]
Up to 150 people drowned when ferries collided on the river in 2010[citation needed] .
Congo River Steamers
1879
Le Royal (in service at Léopoldville yard, Maiden voyage on 21 February 1881)
Albert Thys was a Belgian businessman who was active in the Congo Free State. He gave his name of Thysville to the station of Sona Qongo, currently Mbanza-Ngungu in Bas-Congo.
Cataractes District was a district located in the Kongo Central province, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It dated back to the days of the Congo Free State and the Belgian Congo.
The Districts of the Congo Free State were the primary administrative divisions of the Congo Free State from 1885 to 1908. There were various boundary changes in the period before the Congo Free State was annexed by Belgium to become the Belgian Congo.
Isangila, formerly called Isanghila or Isanguila is the headquarters of a sector of the Seke-Banza territory in Kongo Central province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Louis Pierre Alphonse Valcke was a Belgian soldier and colonial administrator.
Manyanga was a staging post on the route from the coast to Léopoldville during the days of the Congo Free State. It was at the upper end of a navigable reach of the Congo River from Isangila, further downstream to the west. Above Manyanga goods had to be carried by land round the falls and rapids to Stanley Pool.
Nicolas Grang was a Luxembourger soldier who died during an expedition to the Congo.
The En Avant was a small steam launch used in the early days of European exploration of the Congo River basin. It was carried in sections past the cataracts of the lower Congo, reassembled at Stanley Pool and launched in February 1881, the first powered vessel on the long navigable section between the cataracts and the Stanley Falls . In the years that followed it played an important role in carrying the Europeans up and down the river and its tributaries as they established trading stations.
The Compagnie du Congo pour le Commerce et l’Industrie (CCCI) was a private enterprise in the Congo Free State, later the Belgian Congo and then the Democratic Republic of the Congo, whose subsidiaries engaged in a wide range of activities in the Congo between 1887 and 1971. These included railway and river transport, mining, agriculture, banking, trading and so on. It was the largest commercial enterprise in the Congo for many years. It went through various mergers in the years that followed before its successor Finoutremer was liquidated in 2000.
The Société anonyme belge pour le commerce du Haut-Congo (SAB) was a private enterprise in the Congo Free State, later the Belgian Congo, that operated a string of trading stations in the Congo River basin, and exported ivory, rubber and other local products. The ruthless treatment of the local people by SAB agents inspired Joseph Conrad to write his 1899 novel Heart of Darkness.
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