All of a flutter over Oxford v Cambridge boat race (From Oxford Mail)

All of a flutter over Oxford v Cambridge boat race

4:36pm Monday 23rd March 2009 in

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AN author intends to boost a charity for sick Africans by placing a £1,000 bet on the outcome of the Oxford v Cambridge boat race.

Janie Hampton, of Temple Road, Cowley, Oxford, plans to raise enough money to relaunch the oldest boat in Africa as a hospital ship.

Last week, her cause — The Chauncy Maples Malawi Trust — became a registered charity.

Mrs Hampton recently won a free £1,000 bet after being nominated in the William Hill Sports Book Awards for The Austerity Olympics, which explored the 1948 London Games.

She said she now intended to place the entire sum on the outcome of Sunday’s university rowing event.

Mrs Hampton said: “Hopefully Oxford (4/11 favourites) will win and then all the money will go into the fund.”

The Chauncy Maples is a 150-ton steamship built in 1898 by the British United Mission to Central Africa.

It is named after a former curate of St Mary and Magdalen and Bishop of Nyasaland who drowned in Lake Malawi, where the boat now sits, in 1895.

The ship was initially used as a missionary school, an emergency refuge from Arab slave traders and a hospital, but was commandeered as a troop carrier and naval gunboat during the First World War.

After the Universities Mission to Central Africa sold the boat to the Malawi government in 1953, she became a passenger and cargo vessel.

The boat is currently used as a bar and hasn’t sailed on Lake Malawi for a decade.

But Mrs Hampton plans to help raise £250,000 to equip it as a floating hospital clinic, which will serve the local population.

She said: “This is a very exciting and unique project. She’s the oldest ship in Africa and she’s beautiful.

“There are about two million people that have no access to healthcare because they live at the side of the lake and there are no roads.

“There is a huge amount of malaria, HIV and Aids and tuberculosis.

“The living conditions are very basic. They live in huts made from mud and straw and they might have a pit latrine and bathe in the lake.”

If all goes to plan, the boat will be up and running by next summer. The East African country’s government will then pay the ongoing costs of the Glasgow-built steamer.

l To find out more about the charity visit chauncymaples.org ghamilton@oxfordmail.co.uk