The Nyanza was build in the twenties in Kisumu, Kenya, on Lake Victoria. The engines and most of the other machines, however, were imported from the UK. This includes the steam engines, boilers and all other steam-powered machinery.
Up till recently she was in use as cargo ship on Lake Victoria, going to Mwanza, Musoma, Bukoba, Port Bell and other ports in Tanzania and Uganda.
The owner, Delship Ltd, now wants to convert the ship to diesel power and get rid of the two steam engines and all steam-powered machinery on board. The engines are in good working condition. They might need a clean-up and some paint but were well maintained and are as good (or even better) as you can expect from 90 year old machinery. What will be available is everything that depends on steam power or has to do with the steam engines. This includes the anchor and rear winches, generators, boilers, fuel pumps, auxiliary pumps, the electrical controls, telegraphs, the steering machine and even the propellors. Almost all items date from the time the ship was build. The exceptions are the electricals, they were added or replaced later.
The ship is in Kisumu port for maintenance now. Saturday the 23rd of March we went over and took the pictures listed below. Each description links to a full-size picture. I did not decrease the resolution because I know people want to see the details. The sizes range from about 200kB to about 800kB. This may cause some long downloads!
For the pictures we walked through the ship from bow to stern: anchor-deck, bridge and steering house, auxiliary machinery room (next to the stack), boiler room, engine room and the rear deck. This is the order I put them on this website. Below the list of pictures is a list of machinery that is onboard and available, together with the particulars.
Although I used to be a mechanical engineer of some sorts, I'm certainly not a steam engine expert. Some of the pictures might therefore have captions/names that are wrong. If so, my apologies.
Below are the particulars of most of the relevant equipment on board, as I got them from the owner. They were obtained by copying the nameplates on the machines themselves. In the list of pictures I included some images of nameplates.
Web page and pictures by Erik Schoute
P.O.Box 1578 Kisumu, Kenya
telephone: +254 35 22787 (home) / +254 72 772667 (mobile)
email: erik@schoute.org / eschoute@kisian.mimcom.net