One problem though: how was a good, well-designed and equipped boat to get to the river?
Solution: design and build the boat in England, take it apart, transport it across hundreds of miles of seas, rivers and land – then reconstruct it at the other end. Simple.
Under the supervision of Congo missionary George Grenfell, the Peace was built, tested and admired in England. Seventy feet long, ten and a half feet wide, with two small cabins, it would be able to travel 12 miles an hour.
By the end of October 1882 the boat had been dismantled again and there was ‘not much to see beyond heaps of material and a skeleton’. Divided into 800 lots, each weighing around 65 pounds, each package was sewn in canvas and numbered. If a package was lost during the long journey a duplicate could be sent immediately from England.
In pieces, then, she began the voyage to Africa.
From the mouth of the River Congo, she could travel over the first stretch by water. After that, though, the journey would prove more problematic: all 800 pieces had to be carried overland for 260 miles to Stanley Pool (known today as Malebo Pool). They would then need to be reassembled.
Tragedy struck early though: the engineer – Mr Doke, a student at Regent’s Park College – died during the journey.
Grenfell waited impatiently for BMS to send reinforcements only to hear the shattering news that two further engineers sent out from England had died of fever on the way up to Stanley Pool.
Unable to face further delay, Grenfell started the work himself. The boat’s keel was laid in March 1884, and he and his African assistants worked so quickly that by June of the same year the vessel was complete again, in one piece.
Then it had to be launched – by no means an easy matter – but carried through in the end without a hitch. “She lives! She lives!” cried Grenfell’s assistants as they saw her at last move easily through the water.
Grenfell, overjoyed at the boat’s reconstruction wrote back to England:
"What might have required two years to accomplish was performed in a few months; eight hundred pieces, transported from England to Stanley Pool by rail, steamer, and carriers – not one piece missing – and now the whole work completed. Most clearly God’s finger points ONWARD! FORWARD! And I cannot shut my eyes to the crying needs of the untold multitudes of people on the four hundred miles of the noble Upper Congo I have already traversed, or my heart to the pressing claims of the multitudes yet further beyond in the vast interior regions. We now most earnestly need REINFORCEMENTS…
For over 20 years the Peace steamed up and down the Congo waterways with Grenfell on board, standing behind his compass taking measurements and making observations – exploring the Congo River and paving the way for many others to come and carry on the mission work there. The Peace carried supplies and new recruits, and brought back news of progress and weary workers seeking rest and change back in England. Sister boats were also built: the Goodwill, the Endeavour and the Grenfell, named after the missionary explorer.
To complete the circle of her story, though, the Peace was dismantled once again in 1908. Again she was packed in bundles and transported, this time back to England, where her steel plates were further divided up and mounted on cards, sold to raise money for the continuing Congo mission.
The story of the Peace? One boat. 800 pieces. Thousands of miles – for one mission.