What is a Berry?
You guessed wrong. Bareboat or demise charters are commonplace. I have half a dozen files in my office drawers concerning them and I don’t do much chartering work. Common as dirt.
I didn’t even know they were used before WWI, yet since Mr. Very died in 1907…
Basically, at night in No Mans Land, one shot straight up to illuminate your surrounding area for artillery etc., and made oneself known to enemy snipers. I would have guessed 200 feet. But a modern Very Pistol goes further than that: High Performance 12-gauge red aerial flares (average 7 seconds, up to 500 ft, 16,000 candela.
I really doubt that 500 feet was possible — or desirable — with such earlier models; but I’d ask that on a gun forum if I were you. American gun enthusiasts are not shy about revealing unplumbed depths of minutiae on models or performance that has very little to do with just shooting at someone for fun or profit.
The right angle is straight up. At a right angle the projectile would drop into the sea prolly before flaring.
Humphrey Bogart. 
Well yes - I’ve done this a number of times myself, in the Caribbean & elsewhere.
My point was about a ship of a size suitable for an expedition to Africa, around 1900 - a very different thing from a modern yacht suitable for a holiday. Among other issues, there’s the fact that the steam plant on any such vessel will be more or less one-of-a-kind with quirks that require a certain level of experience if it’s to be operated safely & reliably. (This has been the case for all the steam plants of which I have experience.)
I thus think it’s naive to imagine that an expedition leader can expect to show up and take command of a largeish ship sans experienced crew. Out of curiosity, what’s the largest vessel available for crewless charter in your files?
The expedition leader is not going to take command of the ship without the proper Masters licience and he will not beable to run the engine room unless he has a Chief Engineers licience. Plus he will need a 1st, 2nd and 3rd mates and engineers. Unless the ship is small. Plus he is also going to need the rest of the crew. Someone with the proper liecence should be able to operate the plant.
Right - once he has some experience with it. It would not be realistic to expect to show up and say: here’s my license, my engineers and my snipes - so thanks, and we’ll be underway for Africa tomorrow morning.
For a modern license analogy, even the most advanced license does not of itself qualify a pilot to fly a particular airplane. He’ll require a thorough checkout for even a simple aircraft; a complex one probably requires a course of instruction that gets into the fine detail of its systems, how they interconnect, and how to handle a host of problem that might arise.
The problem is worse for ships, since unlike aircraft it’s largely true that no two are the same.
Quite right. And the ship owner will almost certainly want to ensure that all these folks are qualified and understand the power plant they will be operating. IOW, a substantial crew familiar with the ship will be needed.
I think this is a strong argument that a “bareboat” charter of a vessel of the type in question is impractical and unlikely.
Any engineer worth his salt will go down into the engineroom before his watch to check it out.
I got dispatched to my first 3rds job Saturday morning. Graduated from the Academy in the afternoon. Went aboard Sunday morning and Sailed that afternoon. Stood my first watch as senior watch officer on the 8-12 watch. It was expected that I would know how to run the plant without anyone holding my hand.
It is possable to sign a bare boat chater one day and sail as soon as the ship is loaded. If the ship is cold iron it will be more difficult because when the new crew signs articles the first job will be lighting off the plant. But if a bareboat charter is signed with an existing crew then the expedition leader would only have to go to the ship see which crew members he wanted to keep. Replace the ones he does not. Load the ship and set a time to sail. The captian would check with the Chief Engineer and if it was OK they would sail.
If your definition of “bareboat” charter includes the ability to keep existing crew members, then I’d say we agree on what’s practical. (I’d always understood “bareboat” to mean “no crew included”.)
You’d most likely charter a steamship like the ones on which my grandfather served (he was sunk several times in WW1, and we have a letter from him describing his ship hitting a mine). 1900 was well after the end of the tea clipper era, but there were clippers still in operation.
However, piracy was still very much a concern. I have three swords from that era. Family history has it that they were taken from pirates.
“bareboat” means the crew is not provided by the owner. But if the ship has an exixting crew the day before the charter is a ative there is no point if firing them. It means paying the crew and being sure everyone has the proper papers is the responsibility of the person with charter. They can keep the ones they want and replace the ones they do not.
If there is no crew when the charter is signed then there are two choices ask the owner for recomendations for a crew or go down to the shippping hall with a list of positions that you will want and have them dispatch a crew. And any engineer with a Department of Commerce licience (remember we are talking 1900) should be able to light off the plant and get the ship running. May take them all day to trace out the lines before starting.
High seas piracy (the kind associated with the Caribbean or the Barbary Coast) had been more or less wiped out by the British Navy, but there were still coasts where passing ships would be targeted by locals operating short range coastal boats. Smugglers (including slavers!) might be encountered at times.
To reiterate what’s already been said, by pre-WW1 steamers were used for most purposes because of the dependability of not needing to rely on wind, although sailing ships were still used on a handful of routes where it made economic sense. Both steamers AND sailing ships of any great size would have steel hulls by this time. Range was enough of a factor that “coaling stations” were economically and militarily very important. Reefs were and are still dangerous because concentrating the weight of the ship on one small portion of the hull can crack the ship’s spine.
Also, to spell out something alluded to upthread: most of the interior of sub-Saharan Africa is a vast plateau, meaning that going in from the coast at one point or another you encounter either rapids or falls. So getting a riverboat or launch past that point is going to be a major endeavor.
Your experience may be limited to yacht bareboating but that isn’t what a commercial maritime person is talking about when they talk about a demise or bareboat charter.
I have demise (or bareboat) charters in my files for capesize bulkersthat could fit a few modest expeditionary steamboats from 1900 in *one *of their holds (and they have five or more holds). Demise charters are a common method of structuring ownership and operational arrangements for commercial vessels. That is true now, and it has been true for centuries.
I have a copy of Scrutton on Charterparties on my desk. It’s a legal textbook, not a history book, so it doesn’t say how long demise charters have been in use as such, but a quick look shows that it cites cases concerning such charters dating from the mid 19th century, and I have no doubt that it only goes back that far because cases before that are somewhat irrelevant to modern practice, not because such charters were not used far further back than that.
Professional seafarers take over vessels with which they are not familiar regularly. They would always have a handover for preference, but that is not always an option. A handover may well not be very long (three to four days).
I don’t know what legal structure might be adopted for the situation outlined by the OP. There are quite a number couple of possibilities but I think two are most likely.
The first is that the expedition leader would time charter a vessel ie charter a vessel with master and crew. In this scenario the actual owner would probably have responsibility for the operation of the vessel (including for maintenance, insurance etc) and the master and crew would ultimately report to the actual owner not the expedition leader. However, the master would act to the orders of the charterer as regards the activities to which the vessel is put.
However, another entirely practical possibility is that the expedition leader would want to have greater control, but not have the funding to buy a vessel outright. In such a scenario he might well demise charter a vessel: in this way he has total control of the vessel and the master and crew but does would not have to come up with the purchase price outright. Demise charters are commonly used in this way today. The actual owner would be someone with essentially a finance interest in the vessel but who wouldnt have wanted to run it day to day. Crewing issues and risk issues under this scenario are trivial and dealt with commonly in the industry. Risk issues are covered by insurance and crewing issues are covered by hiring crew off the previous operator and/or just having a handover/familarisation period.