The African Queen

The actual steamboat from the 1951 Bogart and Hepburn film, moored at Key Largo

The original steam-powered boat used in John Huston's 1951 film The African Queen, starring Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn, is moored at a Key Largo marina and available to visit. The 30-foot wooden vessel was built in Britain in 1912 and shipped to Africa to work the rivers and lakes of Uganda and the Congo. After the film it was abandoned and eventually tracked down and restored.

The boat is listed on the US National Register of Historic Places and can be viewed at the dock. Canal cruises on the African Queen run from the marina; the boat is still steam-powered and makes short scenic trips through the waterways behind Key Largo. The combination of Hollywood history and the improbability of a century-old African steam launch ending up in the Florida Keys makes it one of the stranger sights in the Keys.

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A story
The African Queen was built in 1912 for the British East Africa Railway and spent decades working African waterways before being discovered in Cairo in the 1970s, decades after the film had made it famous. A Florida entrepreneur tracked it down, shipped it to Key Largo, and restored it. In 1992 it was added to the US National Register of Historic Places — one of the few boats ever to receive that designation.

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