Who’ll save Churchill’s funeral barge from sailing into history?
Her finest hour was when she carried Winston’s coffin past millions of riverside mourners. Now she needs a new owner with £2 million to spend who’ll secure her for the nation
HER CLASSIC good looks still turn heads at the age of 66, as she weaves her way between the hefty sightseeing vessels chugging up and down the river Thames. ‘all the tour guides love to point her out,’ says her proud skipper, Paul Hastings. ‘she’s part of history.’
she certainly is — and has been ever since her finest hour, in January 1965, when she carried the greatest statesman in British history on his final journey.
More than 350 million people around the world watched the Havengore sail up the Thames with the coffin of sir Winston churchill, draped in the Union flag, lying in state on her deck.
it was Havengore’s task to carry sir Winston from his funeral at st Paul’s ul’s
cathedral to Waterloo station, from where ea special train would take him to the family mily burial plot in Oxfordshire.
in the immortal words of the BBc’s c’s richard Dimbleby: ‘and so Havengore sails ails into history — not even the Golden Hind has borne so great a man.’
equally unforgettable was the profoundly dly moving sight of dozens of cranes along the riverbank lowering their jibs in tribute, as she sailed by with the great man’s family and the bearer party from the Grenadier Guards rds also on board.
This 85ft former Port of london authority rity hydrographic survey vessel, made from om english oak and finest teak, has gone on to play her part in many great state occasions ons since then, too. she was at the Queen’s side ide during that blustery river pageant to mark ark the 2012 Diamond Jubilee.
she has been a stalwart of the national nal armistice Day commemorations each ch November, when she sails to Westminster r to lay wreaths in the Thames.
and on the 50th anniversary of the great eat man’s funeral, in 2015, the churchill family mily came aboard to retrace the funeral route ute followed by a mid-river wreath-laying.
i was lucky enough to be one of the he passengers that day and was astonished by the size of the crowds greeting us from the bridges and the riverbanks on a freezing g midweek morning. The relatives were bowled over by it all. some were in tears.
But might the Havengore now be about to ‘sail into history’ once and for all? For her owner has — very reluctantly — decided that the time has come to find a new custodian. He is the first to admit this has been a labour of (expensive) love.
‘i’ve devoted 15 years to her and i have loved it,’ says chris ryland. ‘But i am getting on, i’m
74 and i can’t expect my family to keep on pouring money into this so i’d like to find someone else to take her on.’
The former entrepreneur forged a lifelong attachment to all things churchillian when, as a boy, he took a day off school and hitchhiked from his Gloucestershire home to Westminster Hall where the wartime leader was lying in state.
Young ryland thought nothing of spending hours queuing in the freezing cold to pay his respects and, back at home, was glued to the funeral on his mother’s little black and white television.
and 40 years later, he had just sold his stake in his successful iT services business when a friend alerted him to a story which might be of interest.
Having spent her twilight years doing trips around chatham dockyards in Kent, the Havengore had been put up for auction at sotheby’s by a private owner. she had failed to reach
the £1 million reserve price but a would-be buyer was prepared to match the highest bid — £780,000 — and take her overseas to become just another pleasure craft cruising in the Mediterranean.
so Mr ryland stepped in and offered the same amount with one important proviso: he would bring the Havengore back home to london and keep her active in public life.
‘it was the only place for her,’ he tells me. a suitably prestigious berth was found at st Katharine Docks, next to the Tower of london.
However, in the finest traditions of old boats, she needed rather more care and attention than he had bargained for. a three-stage refurbishment programme, over several years, has cost him a few million pounds, he says. That is on top of the £100,000 basic annual running costs, which he subsidises through occasional charter trips.
However, now that she is back in top condition, he feels that the time is right to bow out for a reasonable price. ‘ i’m never going to recoup what i have spent but that was never the point,’ he says.
a yacht broker has suggested a value of £2 million on the open market, although Mr ryland
would prefer to find a like-minded buyer who shares his belief that the Havengore belongs at the heart of our national life.
so i have come down to the Thames to remind myself what we might be losing if she ends up leaving london, or worse still, the UK.
i meet her at Tower Pier where she is unloading a corporate party that has hired her for a day’s clay pigeon shooting out in the Thames estuary. it is day trips like these which help defray the maintenance bill. everyone stepping off has a broad smile on their face.
even after a day on the water, she is immaculate. The main saloon, which can accommodate up to 40 people, leads out on to the spacious rear deck where a brass plaque, presented by the international churchill society (UK), commemorates her role on January 30, 1965.
Down below, there is a handsome owner’s cabin with double
Craft belongs at the heart of national life
Mementos of the great man decorate cabin
bed and en suite bathroom. Next door, a study with two leather armchairs and a desk is decorated with churchillian souvenirs, prints, magazines and newspapers.
‘i would sometimes use that as my london office,’ says Mr ryland, adding that he would occasionally stay on board overnight — just because he could.
Towards the bow, the wheelhouse is largely unchanged, save
for the screens which are part of the modern navigation system on any vessel of this size. For Havengore is registered as a commercial vessel and must be sailed by a professional skipper. Mr Ryland may be the owner but he can’t drive his own boat.
Elsewhere are the crew quarters and, of course, the engine room. She still runs on the original twin 157 horsepower Gardner engines which were installed when she was built by Tough Brothers of Teddington in 1956. Even when these required a major overhaul, Mr Ryland insisted on using parts from a heritage steam locomotive to keep things authentic.
She was originally commissioned by the Port of London Authority to survey the 95-mile tidal stretch of the Thames from Teddington to the North Sea. Her job was to produce precise measurements for the benefit of the ships which still made London one of the busiest ports in the world and she was named after a boggy island on the Essex coast.
The rear deck was specifically designed to be long and wide in order to accommodate a large range of surveying equipment. It was precisely this feature which earned the Havengore her place in history, not that her crew knew it at the time.
They were a little surprised, as were Tough Brothers, when she was sent back to the boatyard in 1963 in order to be re- equipped with detachable railings and new deck fittings.
It had already been decided by the powers that be that Churchill would have a state funeral whenever the dark day came and, what’s more, it would include a maritime element to reflect his many links with the Admiralty.
She returned to surveying duties after the funeral and continued working for longer than any other Port of London Authority vessel.
Finally, in 1995, she was withdrawn from service and put up for sale. A New Zealand businessman, Owen Palmer, bought her, moved her to Kent and devoted many years to keeping her afloat. Illhealth eventually forced him to sell and that was when Mr Ryland came into the Havengore story.
He is very proud of the part she has played in so many great occasions, such as the Diamond Jubilee river pageant when he welcomed nine members of the Royal Family and then Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, on board for the voyage along the Thames.
He is particularly honoured to have received a full seven-volume edition of Churchill’s The Second World War, signed by the
London should remain her home port
Churchill family as a thank-you for his efforts over the years (he has also been a major supporter and trustee of Gloucestershire’s regimental museum).
Mr Ryland has chartered Havengore to celebrities, businesses, fellow Churchill devotees and even a Sikh funeral party who wanted to scatter the ashes of a loved one over the river.
Any future owner will need to bear in mind that, with a shallow draft, she is very much designed for rivers, not oceans.
‘She handles beautifully but she is not a sea boat,’ says her skipper. As a result, her entire maritime life has been spent in southern England.
Her furthest voyages have been to Cowes Week, on the Isle of Wight, in one direction, and the repair yard in Ipswich, where she goes for her annual service.
This may turn out to be a blessing. For however much some millionaire may like the idea of cruising the French Riviera in one of history’s most famous launches, Havengore was built to serve the Thames and those who dwell on it.
Long may that last.