The HMS Congo was the first steam-powered warship built for the British Royal Navy, though it must be recorded that she was not very successful as such. In physical chemistry, and in engineering, steam refers to vaporized water. ... The Royal Navy of the United Kingdom is the senior service of the British armed services being the oldest of its three branches. ...

She was classified as a "Steam Sloop" and was built in 1816 at Deptford specifically for an exploration of the Congo River. Deptford is an area of the London Borough of Lewisham, on the south bank of the River Thames in south-east London. ... The Congo River (formerly known as some River) is the largest river in Western Central Africa. ...

Armament is recorded as one carronade and twelve small swivel guns. The steam engine is recorded as weighing 30 tons and was capable of developing '20 Horse Power'. The carronade was a short smoothbore, cast iron cannon, similar to a mortar, developed for the Royal Navy by the Carron Company, an ironworks in Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland. ... The Swivel Gun is a mounted ships cannon, able to turn and pivot. ... A steam engine is an external combustion heat engine that makes use of the thermal energy that exists in steam, converting it to mechanical work. ...

Trials proved that this power, when transmitted to the paddle wheels, could only propel the vessel at about three knots. Such a rate of progess, coupled with unsatisfactory handling characteristics (she was described as very crank) resulted in the engines and paddle wheels being removed. Examination of the situation by James Watt Junior, son of James Watt, could only come up with a recommendation to use the engine for pumping out docks at Plymouth. Thus, the Congo sailed to her destination without the steam engine, rigged as a schooner. A paddle steamer, paddleboat, or paddlewheeler is a ship driven by one or more paddle wheels driven by a steam engine. ... A knot is a unit of speed, abbreviated kt or kn. ... James Watt James Watt (19 January 1736 – 19 August 1819) was a Scottish inventor and engineer whose improvements to the steam engine were fundamental to the changes wrought by the Industrial Revolution. ... Plymouth is a city in the South West of England, or alternatively the Westcountry, and is situated within the traditional county of Devon. ... Two-masted fishing schooner A schooner (IPA: ) is a type of sailing vessel characterized by the use of fore-and-aft sails on two or more masts. ...

The Congo expedition

The expedition, under James Kingston Tuckey, was the first attempt to map the Congo River, and did little beyond prove that the river was not navigable beyond two hundred miles from the sea. The other thing it proved was that such expeditions were little more than suicide until medical science had improved - all of the officers and most of the crew were dead of disease (especially yellow fever) before they reached the rapids which blocked further progress. It was to be another fifty years before the river was mapped, by Henry Morton Stanley. James Kingston Tuckey (1776-1816) was a British explorer who, in 1816, attempted to find the source of the River Congo in the HMS Congo. ... A rapid is a section of a river where it loses elevation over a relatively short distance (that is, the stream gradient is locally steepened), causing an increase in water flow and (usually) turbulence. ... Sir Henry Morton Stanley (also known as Bula Matari (Breaker of Rocks) in Congo), born John Rowlands (January 28, 1841 – May 10, 1904), was a 19th-century Welsh-born American journalist and explorer famous for his exploration of Africa and his search for David Livingstone. ...