The gift that left the Queen on crest of a wave

New book reveals Her Majesty was given a helping hand with one royal duty

When all that waving at the crowds starts to make her arms ache, the Queen has a secret weapon: a waving machine, it has been revealed.

It was given to her by a group of mischievous Australian students some years ago and, according to the Princess Royal, the monarch loved it.

“They gave her a stuffed glove on a wooden lever so that you could tweak the end of the lever and this hand went to and fro,” the Princess explains in the new royal bestseller, Queen of the World by Robert Hardman.

“I think they thought it was rather cheeky but Her Majesty was thrilled.”

The current whereabouts of the artificial royal arm is not known but it turns out that the Queen is not the only member of the royal household who has suffered from a sore arm.

The crew of the Royal Yacht Britannia sometimes had a similar problem. Whenever Britannia was sailing through an inland waterway, like the St Lawrence Seaway in North America, large crowds would appear on the banks and wave.

The crew did not wish to appear rude but they also had a job to do so the officers organised “waving parties” to do the job.

“It was exhausting for the people on the bridge to wave all the way through but they didn’t want to upset the locals,” says one of Britannia’s longest-serving yachtsmen, Albert “Dixie” Deane. “So we had a party whose job was just to wave.”

It really was a case of Britannia ruling the waves!

The vessel – now safely tied up as a tourist attraction in Leith in Edinburgh – has had plenty of scrapes over the years, said Mr Hardman.

During the 1994 state visit to Russia, Britannia had to make a grand nighttime exit from St Petersburg with the Queen on board.

The only problem was that the Sovietera charts were no good and Russian pilot, deployed to act as the local guide, could hardly speak English.

As a result, Britannia was virtually sailing blind down the Neva River.

“We went into the first corner,” says Britannia’s former captain, Sir Robert Woodard. “I turned to the pilot and said: ‘Can I cut the corner to port?’ and he said: ‘Da! Da!’ We cut the corner.

“But as we did so, an officer came running up and said: ‘Sir, you do know that the pilot has come up to me and asked: ‘Which side is port?’

In the end, says Sir Woodard, the crew were plotting their course and taking bearings from every landmark: “We were navigating our way out using bus shelters and Coca-Cola hoardings!”

● Queen of the World by Robert Hardman is published by Century (£25).

Picture: PA. The Princess Royal is quoted as saying the Queen was “thrilled” by the present.