In the UK?

Kempton Steam Museum?

"Martin Luther" Steam Tractor Swakopmund, Namibia

https://www.namibia-accommodation.co...tor-swakopmund

"Hier stehe ich, ich kann nicht anders."
(here I stand and I cannot do otherwise)

Wow, really nice find. :up:

WOW!....most impressed :o

I am also impressed, give Skidman a cigar! :up:

Yes, this is it! The story behind this is a long and funny one, but i will spare you that :03:

https://web.archive.org/web/20110719...chichte11.html

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dampfl..._Martin_Luther

(The website is not entirely correct, also translation does not seem to work, the photos are ok..)

In short: german Edmund Trost, Lieutenant-Colonel of the german 'Schutztruppe' imported a road-going "Lokomobile" (as steam tractors are being called in german) to Namibia with his own money in 1896, because transports inland were a chore and it had all to be done with oxen (no railway or 'Feldbahn' yet). Unfortunately steam tractors need a lot of (rare) water, and also its weight is not exactly an advantage in sandy deserts like the Namib. So it took weeks to get the machine to its destination, it sank into the ground all the time, had to be repeatedly dug out and propped up, then the water was empty and had to be transported 30 kilometers (price being 30 Reichsmark for a hundred liters), and arrived weeks later.
Edmund Trost later imported a Diesel truck which was a much better choice, but the best were still: Oxen.
(There was another british fellow getting two steam tractors and two boats on trailers to the Tanganyika lake in WW1, to sink the real African Queen, the german steamer Graf Goetzen), who had his own troubles - this unbelievable journey can only be compared to Sysiphus or Fitzcaraldo's ship-mountain adventure! Very good book about this british ordeal is: "Utmost Fish" by Hugh Wray McCann)

The truck was later owned by a fellow who wanted to sell alcohol to the namibians, so he put a big cask filled with Schnaps on one of the trailers - it was then that the steam tractor made its last journey, being scarce of water and spare parts (the security valve disintegrated) the tractor stopped in the desert and no one was able or had the means to convince it of going on.
So the machine remained at the place for the next century(ies) to come, rusting, now and then polished by sand storms, and slowly sinking into the ground.

The back then recently christianised namibians (forced by british and german missionaries ahem) were well aware of Martin Luther's quote in the famous trial when evangelism parted from catholicism, being asked why he was a "traitor of the catholic cause" and to "splitting the church", he answered
"„Hier stehe ich, ich kann nicht anders, Gott helfe mir. Amen."
~ "here I stand, I cannot do otherwise, God help me, Amen.".
The Namibians found this a fitting name for the poor abandoned machine, so they called it "Martin Luther" with a wink, and the name stuck.

The machine has been put under a shed, then a museum, been partly restored, and became a national landmark in Namibia.

I can post no pictures but will try later, Imgur is under overload, surely due to the election.

Over to Skidmark :salute:

I am not about whataboutism, so i will not go into details of in how good company the Imperial Germany of the time (or before) was.

In Namibia, it was genocide and rightly called that. Thanks to german thoroughness most papers and documents of the time have been stored and survived, minus some material that was destroyed during the firestorms in Hamburg and Berlin during the second great unpleasantness. It is publicly available, with the usual precautions regarding handling like copying etc.
I know a bit about german colonialism since my beloved wife studied ethnology with the focus on Africa, and those german colonies. I am not an expert in any regard of course.

So what is left of the documents is bad enough, and i hope that Germany will go on on its current path (as your link says, near the end) of looking at its past as a cautionary tale rather than calling it glorious.

That was a big clue. The number of countries that used to be British colonies and later became administrators themselves is very small. And there are no steam tractors on display in -hm- Palestine.

Again, a nice puzzle and a cautionary, yet funny story behind it. :03:

Maybe this is not the thread for this kind of considerations, but I'd like to add a little remark here. When historians start "connecting the dots" there is a great chance that things are going in a terribly wrong direction, particularly when crimes of the Nazi regime are under scrutiny and correlated to other barbarities in global history. Doing so usually results at the least in a objectionable relativization... ... and suddenly Coventry and Gütersloh are both on the same list.

Back to topic:

What's this?

https://www.dropbox.com/s/qoeuganp84...okhd.png?raw=1

Please, any hint?

19th century?

Yep, second half of the 19th century. Built in Europe.

England?

Scandinavia.

Seems to be a cutter.. topmast fixed at the rear - Amundsen's Gjöa?

@Catfish: Not Amundsen's Gjöa and not a cutter though the stem bar would fit a cutter

@Akktungbby: Not a research vessel, but a innovative design

Clue: She was sailing (almost) only in inland waters and by sailing I mean steaming.

Another clue: Though she was built in Scandinavia, you would find her much further south.