It's been a while since anything new has been added to the range, but at long last, the one that quite a few of you have been waiting for is here, the ever popular open steam launch African Queen. I've done it at one tenth scale, which makes it around 930mm x 270mm, or 36½" x 10½". With those distinctive hull strakes, it hasn't been an easy one to make, and research has proved especially difficult. I've lost count of the number of times I've sat through the film DVD to try to gain fresh info on the boat, and I know almost all the dialogue for both Humphrey and Katherine off by heart. As all who have seen the film will know, the boat that they used was pretty rough and battered in appearance. I haven’t reproduced this effect on my hull, no dents but not a polished high gloss finish either, so you could also use this hull for a model of several other period launches if you want to. I originally thought that it would be a relatively simple matter of scaling up the little Billings kit design, but not at all, the original boat from the film still survives, but some time between the date the film was made and the present day, the boat topsides & deck layout were altered substantially, also the dummy steam plant used for filming was replaced by a completely different functioning one, all of which means that the Billings version is pretty inaccurate and doesn't represent the film boat at all. Naturally, no useful drawings of the original exist, but I think I've managed to do justice to the true African Queen design in the end. The prize winning model shown on this page was built by Steve Betney, and as you can see, he did an excellent job, particularly with the weathered effect. Without Steve's help and all the useful information he provided, I'd probably have shelved this project long ago, so it was only fitting that his African Queen was built using the very first hull out of the mould.