Papers relating to Richard Grant

Typescript account by Ian Grant of his father Richard Grant's involvement in taking Clydebuilt steamships to Lake Victoria, 1898-1900, with transcripts of schedules of the lake steamers.

Between 1898 and 1900 Richard Grant collected and transported separate parts of the marine steamship SS William Mackinnon from the Mombasa area to Lake Victoria, on behalf of the administration of the Uganda Protectorate, which planned to run a steamboat service from the newly-established dockyards at Kisumu in conjunction with a railway between Kisumu and Nakuru. In 1903 responsibility for Uganda's railway and harbours passed from the Railway Construction Committee to the British East Africa Protectorate and the network opened to traffic. At the same time, Grant was officially confirmed as Superintendent Marine Engineer under the Railway Department at Kisumu, having already been engaged on the construction of the sister ships Winifred and Sybil.

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Collection level description created by Paul Davidson, Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies at Rhodes House.

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Typescript, 1979, Steam up the Nyanza: descriptions of the early history of East Africa and of the East African experiences of Richard Grant, as a mechanical engineer and steamship builder, 1898-1921 (ref. MSS. Afr. s. 1952).