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Saturday 12 August 2017

French gunboat Sagittaire transporting missionaries and cleric labourers towards Stanley Pool, Congo according to the Dutch newspaper De Tijd dated 19 October 1883

An item dated Loanda [Angola] dated 17th October reported the arrival of Sir Frederik Goldsmith (1) on the 3rd at the Congo and who immediately went to the Upper Congo. The French gunboats Sagittaire (2) departed on 10th September with 3 French missionaries and some cleric labourers towards Bona to found at Stanley Pool (3) a mission.

Notes
1. Sir Frederic John Goldsmif (18 May 1818 Milan, Italy-12 January 1908 Hammersmith, England), served in the British Army and in the East India Company. Sent by the Belgian crown to the Congo to estimate the value of the treaties with the chief of the Congo Basin. He was forced to return to England because of his worse health.
2. Of the Crocodile class of composite gunboats, launched in 1881 at Normand, Le Havre, France in 1881, completed in 1881 and stricken in 1896.
3. Nowadays Pool Malebo also known as Lake Nkunda in the lower reaches of the Congo River, with the opposite shores the capital cities of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Republic of Congo.