Publisher's Synopsis
In the movie, they are caught by the Germans and considered to be spies. They even reveal their plan to blow up the ship with torpedoes. They are sentenced to death but at just the moment they are about to be hanged, the ship bumps into the African Queen that they thought had been sunk. The ship blows up and is sunk and our two heroes escape and swim ashore.
The African Queen was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry in 1994, with the Library of Congress deeming it "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant."
Allnutt, who is the mechanic and skipper of the African Queen, a steam-powered launch, owned by a Belgian mining corporation, that plies the upper reaches of the Ulanga River. Allnutt's two-man crew has deserted him at the rumors of war and conscription. Allnutt buries Samuel Sayer and takes Rose back to the African Queen, where they consider what they should do.
The African Queen is well-stocked with tinned food, and carries a cargo of two hundredweight of blasting gelignite. It also holds two large tanks of oxygen and hydrogen. Rose is inflamed with patriotism, and also filled with the desire to avenge the insults the Germans piled on her brother. It occurs to her that the main German defense against a British attack by water is the gunboat Königin Luise, which guards the fictional Lake Wittelsbach into which the Ulanga feeds. She asks Allnutt if he can make the gelignite into a makeshift torpedo.
By loading the gelignite inside the emptied tanks, putting the tanks into the bow of the launch, and rigging a detonator, theyturn the African Queen itself into a sort of large torpedo. Allnutt is inclined to laugh off the idea, but he gives in to Rose's greater strength of will and the two of them set off down the Ulanga, Rose steering and Allnutt maintaining the launch's ancient, balky, wood-burning steam engine.
