Daily Mail - Daily Mail Weekend Magazine
HER MAJ ESTY’S SHIP
She ferried the Royal Family around the world for 44 years, now a new documentary reveals Britannia’s saltiest secrets... like what did the Queen do with the rum?
She is one of the world’s most famous ships. For 44 years the Royal Yacht Britannia majestically circumna vi - ga ted the globe, attracting huge crowds in every port. Presidents, kings and queens, diplomats and business leaders wined and dined in its palatial staterooms – but for the Royal Family it was the informality Britannia offered away from the prying eyes of the public that they particularly prized. When, in December 1997, Britannia was finally decommissioned, the normally reserved Queen was so moved she shed a public tear.
Now, 20 years on, a new documentary – one of a series which starts this month looking at our great royal ships – examines this much-loved ship’s colourful history. It is one that was slow to get off the ground.
As Britannia historian Brian Hoey points out, while plans for a royal yacht had been mooted since the mid-1930s it was only in 1952 – two days before the death of King George VI from lung cancer – that plans were finally approved.
This left his daughter Elizabeth, the new Queen, to oversee their creation. It is something in which she took a keen interest, particularly when it came to the interior design. ‘She wanted country house comfort and she wanted it to be simple and fairly modest,’ says Hoey. ‘ The Queen is rather frugal. They brought a lot of old furniture from royal households and residences.’ That frugality even extended to marking the ship’s official christening in April 1953 not with the traditional champagne but with cheap Australian plonk.
Comfort on the yacht, the design of which was based on a North Sea ferry, was for the few: the 220 crewmen, 20 officers and Royal Marines Band all lived several to a room with just a tiny locker for all their belongings.
Protocol was strict: Harry Horne, who served on board from 1985 until Britannia was decommissioned, recalls that white gym shoes had to be worn every time you ascended to the upper deck to conserve the teak wood and avoid excessive foot traffic over the royal apartments. ‘Communication would be kept to a minimum and certainly no shouting,’ he remembers.
It wasn’t all stuffy formality though: Harry recalls members of the Royal Family from Margaret to Princess Anne coming into the officers’ mess and the ‘unwinding room’ – a recreational space for junior ratings – on more than one occasion. ‘There was a lovely story of Diana going unannounced into the unwinding room, which she called the
“smoky little room” – and then she wouldn’t leave. I do believe the prince was summoned to ask her to go.’ One of the ship’s chefs, meanwhile, recalls that the Queen would come to the kitchen to ceremoniously help stir the rum into the Christmas pudding.
But the yacht’s days were numbered, with public unease growing about her £10-million-a-year running cost. ‘It’s a fun-loving gin palace – that’s what peo- ple thought,’ says Hoey, and by 1997 the Queen had agreed she would be decommissioned. Today Britannia’s a tourist attraction in Edinburgh’s Leith Docks attracting more than 300,000 visitors a year – a chance for the public to absorb a slice of royal and social history we’re unlikely to see again.