DATE: Thursday, June 5, 1997                TAG: 9706050466

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY PAUL CLANCY, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH                    LENGTH:  101 lines

THE AFRICAN QUEEN TO GET UP STEAM FOR HARBORFEST

She glides into view like a memory. Bogart on deck, kicking her in the slats to keep her boiler steaming, Hepburn at the tiller, guiding her through the rapids.

It's the African Queen, the real thing, or at least the most famous one, the dilapidated rust bucket of a 1912 British steam launch that became a vehicle for one of the great movie classics.

And she's ours, for a few weeks anyway. Maybe longer.

James Hendricks, a onetime Louisville lawyer and Key Largo hotel owner, has brought his pride and joy to Hampton Roads in preparation for this weekend's Harborfest.

On Friday, the African Queen will join dozens of other boats, including tall ships, schooners and classic wooden boats, in the parade of sail on the Elizabeth River.

And then, from a berth at Waterside Marina, Hendricks will take Harborfest visitors for rides around the harbor in what must be one of the most famous boats in the world.

What an improbable sight she is: on a Virginia Beach lake surrounded by million-dollar mansions sits 30 feet of rusty-looking steel and African mahogany, with a boiler on deck that looks like a fat potbellied stove, a British Union Jack flying from her bow.

She seems to have chugged right out of the 1951 film that won an Oscar for Humphrey Bogart and fame for Katharine Hepburn and director John Huston.

The African Queen recalls the C.S. Forester novel about a little boat that sank a German warship on Lake Tanganyika during World War I. The one used in the movie was a 1912 steam launch owned by the British East Africa Railroad Co. in Uganda.

Bogart plays an uncouth, cigar-smoking, gin-swilling drifter named Charlie Allnut who improbably falls in love with Rosie Thayer, the prim spinster sister of a missionary in what was then German East Africa.

The two guide the clanking boat through ever-shallower water on the Ulanga-Bora River. Charlie is covered with leeches as he tries to haul the boat. Then, as they give up, a storm lifts the Queen and sets her onto the lake and toward their encounter with the warship.

According to Hendricks, the African Queen was sold at auction in 1968, her engine stripped, for $400, then resold to a San Francisco restaurateur for $730. A Florida investor bought her, installed an 1881 English boiler and sold her to Hendricks in 1981 for $65,000.

Hendricks began corresponding with Hepburn, who lives in Connecticut, in 1982, often inviting her to events where he was taking the boat. She always politely declined, but Hendricks has several typed and signed notes from her.

``How nice of you and how very interesting,'' she wrote in April 1982. ``Dear old Queen.''

Recently, Raynor Parker, owner of Tidewater Crane and Rigging Co. on Newtown Road, saw the Queen at Key Largo and became one of her biggest fans and this week hauled her from Hilton Head, S.C., where she had been on exhibition, to his dock on Crystal Lake near the Oceanfront.

Wednesday, Hendricks, with Parker at the heavy metal tiller, took her for a spin on the lake.

It takes an hour for her to get up steam, Hendricks feeding several 10-pound bags of charcoal into the boiler.

He doesn't have to kick the boiler to get her going, but does stomp on a steam flow lever to get the engine chugging.

The apparatus looks and sounds like an industrial sewing machine as the Queen eases away from the dock, then rattles windows on the lake with her loud, high-pitched whistle.

The boat chugs along at four or five knots, pretty good for an 85-year-old vessel.

Hendricks turns the steam valve and the Queen responds eagerly, picking up speed.

``I had a lot of people tell me it's the best thing that's happened to them,'' Hendricks says.

``She's brought back a lot of memories.'' ILLUSTRATION: Humphrey Bogart in the 1951 film.

DAVID B. HOLLINGSWORTH/The Virginian-Pilot

James Hendricks, owner of the African Queen, sits on the bow of the

boat made famous in a Humphrey Bogart film and unties the lines so

he can go for a cruise on Crystal Lake in Virginia Beach.

DAVID B. HOLLINGSWORTH/The Virginian-Pilot

The African Queen, made famous in a film starring Humphrey Bogart,

sails around Crystal Lake in Virginia Beach. It will be featured at

Harborfest in Norfolk this weekend and will be giving cruises on the