African Queen is Sea Worthy Again

Posted: April 17, 2012  |  By: Daily Freshies

A Florida couple has restored a 100-year-old steamboat used in the classic Humphrey Bogart-Katharine Hepburn film, “The African Queen,” and is offering tours.

Lance and Suzanne Holmquist told The Miami Herald they are leasing the 30-foot riverboat from the owner in exchange for money they earn from giving tours on it in Key Largo.

“There is still an extreme amount of interest in the African Queen,” Suzanne Holmquist told the Herald. “Every week, while we were sitting here just two boats away, we would see hundreds of people come to photograph it, look at it and remember it. To watch all the people come and see the boat so deteriorated was such a shame.”

The couple said they have spent more than three months and $60,000 restoring the craft, which had languished outside a Holiday Inn for a decade after the death of its previous owner, Jim Hendricks Sr.

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