‘Don’t forget he’s an incredibly clever man who holds the record for being the youngest peacetime commander of a ship,’ says Sir Robert Woodard. All of which might have made the Duke of Edinburgh a pretty daunting passenger for a captain of the Royal Yacht. Not so, says Woodard, who can recall just two occasions when the Duke took a ‘particular interest’ in the handling of the ship. One was when Woodard was attempting to deliver the Duke on time to an important charity engagement in West Palm Beach. Britannia had been allocated a small space in a busy harbour. The Yacht’s one weakness was that its steering ceased to be effective at speeds of less than six knots (seven miles per hour) and a 20-knot cross-wind was threatening to pin it side-on against a corner of the quayside. Eventually, Britannia docked with the paintwork intact. ‘My navigating officer was a sweaty wreck. The Duke looked up and said: “I think you can throw away your L-Plates now”. And I’d been in command for two years!’ Woodard’s other hairy moment came as he took Britannia on one of the Yacht’s greatest voyages – that reinvasion of Normandy ahead of the fiftieth anniversary of D-Day. The high point would be sailing up the Caen Ship Canal past Pegasus Bridge, the first piece of Nazi-occupied Europe to be liberated in 1944. There were just inches to spare on either side of the spot where British airborne forces had pulled off this heroic feat of arms. With the Queen and the Duke on the Royal Bridge, thousands of veterans lining both sides of the canal, crowds gathered for miles in either direction and live television cameras filming it all, Woodard and his crew were nervously steaming at cruising speed towards this tightest of squeezes. At which point, a familiar voice could be heard from the Royal Bridge. ‘Keep your eyes on the road!’ shouted the Duke, followed by a roar of laughter. As ever, he had every faith in the crew. Once again, it would prove well placed.
The Queen would prove equally unflappable. Even in a storm, says Commodore Anthony Morrow, Britannia’s last captain, she was a stoical sailor. During the 1969 review of the Western Fleet the weather got so bad that when the Queen returned to the Yacht, it was deemed too dangerous to make the leap from the Royal Barge back to Britannia. The entire Barge had to be hoisted up the side of the Yacht, with her inside it. When she was finally extricated, she remarked: ‘Well, that was fun, wasn’t it?’ Sir Robert Woodard remembers a particularly wobbly moment while the Yacht was tied up in Bordeaux during the 1992 state visit to France. After the Queen’s state banquet on board for President François Mitterrand, several hundred extra guests were invited to an after-dinner reception to watch the traditional quayside display by the Band of the Royal Marines. The Yacht’s officers would ensure that everyone was evenly spread along the decks to ensure a good vantage point for another faultless performance of ‘Highland Cathedral’, ‘Sunset’ and all the other much-loved tunes. At the same time it was the task of the duty officer on the bridge to keep a close eye on the inclinometer, the gadget for monitoring the ship’s angle. With several tons of well-fed French VIPs leaning over one side, the officer lowered a reciprocal amount of weight over the other, using the ship’s barges as a counterbalance. However, President Mitterrand had neglected to tell the Queen that he had a surprise for her. Once the Royal Marines had finished their display on the quayside, the French set off a huge fireworks display in the opposite direction. At which point, all the guests charged across to the other side of the Yacht. Since it was already weighed down by the barges, Britannia lurched like the Titanic. ‘The whole Yacht went right over to the point that the Queen asked me: “Are we going to be alright?”,’ recalls Woodard. ‘I said: “Of course, we are.” Because there was no point in both of us panicking.’
FAREWELL
All the Royal Family have their special memories of Britannia. All took part in the Yacht’s final farewell tour around the United Kingdom in 1997. And all were there, with one notable exception, for the honourable but painful ceremony to mark the decommissioning of Britannia on 11th December 1997. The Queen Mother preferred not to take part. This was where the Queen had enjoyed so many family moments – not just with her own family, but with her ‘family of nations’. What’s more, her children had grown up with the Yachtsmen, a band of brothers who had spent more time attached to a single ship than the crew of any other ship in the Royal Navy. As a naval wife, mother and daughter herself, it is not surprising the Queen was upset that day. More than twenty years later, it is said that the Princess Royal dislikes hearing ‘Highland Cathedral’ because of its associations with Britannia. The little girl who proudly presented the bouquet on Clydeside that day in 1953, as the Queen launched her beloved Britannia, recalls saying farewell when the Yacht made its last appearance in London. ‘She came down the Thames for a final goodbye and I remember weeping copiously seeing her for the last time,’ says Robin, Countess of Onslow. She then watched the decommissioning ceremony on the news. ‘It may well have been perhaps the only time that the Queen was close to welling up in public. But it was cruel of the television cameras to pan in on her. The vessel was almost another member of the Royal Family when you think of all the places that she’s safely conveyed the family.’
In a world that increasingly appreciates the value of ‘soft power’ – the triumph of influence over coercion – many still find it bizarre that a leading maritime nation like Britain could have disposed of an asset as valuable as the Royal Yacht. Chief Emeka Anyaoku, the Nigerian former Secretary-General of the Commonwealth, remains baffled: ‘Britannia should have been replaced. Some latter day Prime Ministers of Britain have tended to underestimate the extent and the value of British soft power. If I were Prime Minister, I would pay greater attention to sustaining it.’
During his many years at Marlborough House, Chief Anyaoku would visit almost as many Commonwealth countries as the Queen. ‘I didn’t have Britannia so I never made it to Tuvalu,’ he laughs, recalling the Queen’s famous 1982 arrival in a war canoe. Yet he saw Britannia in action all over the world. And he has no doubt that the Queen could not have achieved all that she has without her Yacht.
Ultimately, Britannia’s demise was down to bad timing and political incompetence. At the moment when a substantial refit was required, in the mid-Nineties, the fortunes of the Royal Family were at a low ebb. In 1994, John Major’s government announced that Britannia would be taken out of service in 1997, while ministers would retain an open mind on the possibility of a replacement. Shortly before the 1997 election, the same Conservative government announced that it would build a new yacht after all, with a budget of £60 million. But it had failed to follow the golden rule – observed when Britannia was ordered in 1951 – that major undertakings involving the monarchy require cross-party agreement. Tony Blair’s Labour Party was not consulted and duly opposed the idea, which thus became an election issue. Unsurprisingly, on being elected a few months later, the new government declined to commission a new Yacht. Blair would later admit to the author that it had been a mistake to get rid of Britannia in the first place and that he would have retained it, if he had been elected sooner. Even within the Palace, however, there were those who felt, with a heavy heart, that the age of Royal Yachts was over. ‘Britannia ran out of road,’ says one senior ex-member of the Royal Household. ‘Visits were getting shorter and it was getting to the point that we would be doing some things simply because we could get the Yacht there, not because we needed to do them.’
A former Private Secretary agrees: ‘The yacht is a sad departure but, for me, an unlamented one. It was, as someone said, “all kicks and no ha’pence”. Every time the Queen did her Western Isles cruise, the press would work out to the nearest drop how much fuel they’d used, how much it cost and so on. Those days are over. Yes, lovely to go to Copenhagen or Stockholm by yacht but it was two days on the way there and two days on the way back and diaries are just busier. The Queen’s a realist. She knew the time was up.’
The Royal Family themselves were determined to avoid becoming involved in any of the arguments. Whatever their personal attachment to the Yacht and its crew, thi
s was very clearly a political matter and was thus strictly off-limits. Hence the brevity of that mournful speech by the Prince of Wales on the night of Britannia’s retirement. There were plenty in Parliament, the press and the general public keen to keep up the pressure for a new Yacht. There was support, too, from right across the Commonwealth. Chief Anyaoku, for example, joined one of several consortia that have campaigned for a new Yacht over the years. With no government willing to devote public money, along with inevitable sensitivities about sponsorship, each attempt has foundered. Of necessity, members of the Royal Family have stayed firmly detached from all debate. However, one consortium including senior ex-Royal Navy figures, a famous naval architect and leading maritime industry figures has drawn up advanced designs for a national sailing ship, with both a university and sail-training role when not on royal or scientific duty. The fully costed plans for the ‘University of the Oceans’ emphasise that it would be a ‘UK flagship’, most definitely not a ‘yacht’ and not dependent on public money.
One of Britannia’s inherent shortcomings was the word ‘yacht’ – with its connotations of luxury and idle pleasure. It actually derives from the seventeenth-century Dutch word for a racing boat or pilot launch. ‘Some people will always associate “yacht” with gold taps, I’m afraid,’ says one former officer. Perhaps if, at the very outset, Britannia had been designated the ‘National Flagship’ instead of the ‘Royal Yacht’, things might have taken a different turn.
Once there was no prospect of a reprieve for Britannia, some people, including the Princess Royal, argued that the Yacht should be scrapped or scuttled. Ministers thought otherwise, to the delight of the millions of visitors who have been to see it berthed in its new home in Leith, on the outskirts of Edinburgh. Now carefully maintained by a charity, the Royal Yacht Britannia Trust, the Yacht is one of Scotland’s most popular attractions and an award-winning member of the ‘Core Collection’ of Britain’s National Register of Historic Vessels. Visitors can look through the royal apartments and absorb that same airy, unostentatious, ‘domestic’ atmosphere that, between them, the Queen, the Duke and Sir Hugh Casson had wanted to create. It is the first and only place in Britain that anyone can view the bedroom of a living monarch. Aside from some minor alterations (the ladies-in-waiting’s sitting room, for example, is now a gents lavatory), the only notable omissions are the original dining-room furniture and tableware. Prince Philip moved most of this to Frogmore House, Windsor to create a ‘Britannia Room’ as a memorial to the Yacht and prevent the collection being broken up. Back in Edinburgh, the crowds on board the real Britannia are equally interested in the crew’s old quarters. All like to look inside the Yachtsmen’s bar, officially called the Unwinding Room and known to all as Ye Olde Honk Inn (the Princess of Wales dropped in there during her honeymoon and ended up playing the piano). Through a glass screen, the public can inspect the captain’s cabin, faithfully laid out for breakfast exactly as it would have been, complete with plastic replica fry-up and morning newspaper (though ex-Yotties are always a little puzzled that the newspaper in question is the Guardian).
It is a reflection of the lasting bond between the Yacht, the officers, the crew and the passengers that there are still regular reunions of the Association of Royal Yachtsmen, many of them attended by a member of the Royal Family. A few years ago, the Queen invited all those attending a reunion to come for a reception first at Windsor Castle. She will always send a special message to be read out at the association’s gatherings. Even more striking is the sight, each spring, of dozens of former Yotties dressed in their overalls as they return to perform a week’s unpaid maintenance work on board. A former Marine Engineer Mechanic sets to work in the engine room, polishing the pipework. Former Able Seamen can be found on the staircase, sanding and varnishing the woodwork. Two former Leading Cooks get cracking in the Ship’s Galley to produce meals for their old comrades. On the final day, the old Yachtsmen line up on the Verandah Deck to hear the time-honoured command for a naval celebration: ‘Splice the mainbrace.’ At which point, everyone receives a ‘tot’ of rum for their work. Before they drink it, they raise their glasses in a toast to someone who is not just a remote symbolic figure, but someone they are all very proud to know: ‘The Queen’.
* Dating back to the eighteenth century, the rum ration or ‘tot’ was the daily measure of rum given to all non-officers at noon. Equivalent to 70 ml of alcohol at 95.5% proof, it was easily enough to put anyone over the modern driving limit. By the Sixties, the Admiralty had decided it was positively dangerous in an age of hair-trigger missile technology. The Navy Minister at the time, David Owen tested it on himself: ‘I drank the tot at noon and I couldn’t make a decision after 2.30,’ he says. To avoid a mutiny, the tot was replaced by three daily cans of beer.
† The binnacle was the ornate pillar block housing the ship’s compass. Carved from a single piece of oak, it had been in every Royal Yacht since 1817.
‡ She would deliver her first Christmas broadcast by television the following year, four months after Lord Altrincham’s appeal for a more modern monarchy.
§ Dixie Deane recalls being given a guided tour of the island on the back of a motorbike driven by one Tom Christian, a direct descendant.
Chapter 10
ELIZABETH, MARGARET AND NELSON
‘He needs a show’
HUMBLE AND OBEDIENT SERVANT
No other foreign country can claim to have had such an impact on the Queen as the one that she studiously avoided for the best part of half a century. Addressing the people of South Africa at the end of her 1995 state visit, she did not mince her words. It had been, she said, ‘one of the outstanding experiences of my life’. Her life has been a catalogue of extraordinary experiences, so when she described this one as ‘outstanding’, it was praise of the highest order.
South Africa had been the first foreign country she visited, arriving with her parents back in 1947 ahead of that momentous twenty-first birthday pledge. And it was the future of South Africa that would bedevil her beloved Commonwealth for a large part of her reign. This was the issue that would bring her as close to a constitutional crisis as anything during the longest reign in history. There were moments when it threatened to cause a terminal schism and bring down the Commonwealth, too. Now, here she was, toasting South Africa’s freedom and saluting perhaps the Commonwealth’s greatest achievement. ‘Outstanding’ was no exaggeration.
For two decades, while the domestic royal story veered from the royal-wedding euphoria of the Eighties to the smoke-flecked matrimonial misery and tragedy of the Nineties, there was an entirely separate chain of events to preoccupy the Head of the Commonwealth. Fortunately for the Queen, her international fortunes were a royal story running entirely counter to her domestic ones. Though these were historically awful years at home, the monarchy could at least derive enormous solace and reaffirmation overseas. And dominating this chapter of her life were two titanic figures for whom the Queen would retain the highest regard. She would get to know them both very well, though the pair themselves would meet only fleetingly. One would fade from public view at the very moment the other emerged into the sunlight. They had passionately contrasting views on nearly all the issues of the day. If they were united on one point, it was in their respect for the Queen. She, in turn, bestowed on them arguably her most illustrious personal honour. Even by the exalted standards of the Order of Merit, there could be few more distinctive recipients than Margaret Thatcher and Nelson Mandela.
The relationship between the Queen and her first female Prime Minister will preoccupy historians for years to come. Her rapport with Nelson Mandela can be summed up by a series of letters stored in the Royal Archives. They are perhaps the only regular correspondence the Queen has ever received from anyone except family (or schoolchildren) that begin: ‘Dear Elizabeth . . .’ One thing we can be sure of is that Mrs Thatcher would not have started any letter to the Queen like that. According to her former principal Private Secretary, Robi
n Butler, the Conservative leader was always meticulous in observing the correct form, after an early brush with the Queen’s private office. ‘When she was still Leader of the Opposition, she went to some event at Buckingham Palace and she wrote a thank-you letter afterwards that started informally,’ says Butler. ‘I don’t think she quite started it “Dear Elizabeth” but the Palace rang up Caroline* and said: “The Queen expects her Prime Minister or her Leader of the Opposition to observe the formalities”.’ According to Charles Moore, Mrs Thatcher’s biographer, the Queen’s Private Secretary had gently pointed out that ‘Yours sincerely’ was not quite the way to conclude a letter to the Sovereign. The ‘correct’ form would have been something along the lines of ‘I have the honour, Ma’am, to remain Your Majesty’s humble and obedient servant’.
This seems much more likely to have been the intervention of a courtier than an edict from the Queen. She has been famously forgiving of those negotiating royal protocol for the first time, whether it is the dinner guest drinking the contents of his finger-bowl or the nervous man who drops into a curtsey at an investiture. Mrs Thatcher, according to Charles Moore, ‘wanted to observe the proprieties and had no desire to turn everything upside down.’ He went on: ‘Those who worked for her noticed how worried she always was by all matters of dress and protocol.’
From the moment Mrs Thatcher took office, she would be scrupulous in not keeping the Queen waiting, frequently turning up early for her weekly audience. On October 12th 1984, after that IRA bomb had destroyed the Conservative Party’s conference hotel in Brighton, the Queen was in the USA and was desperately concerned to speak to her Prime Minister. On finally making contact with Mrs Thatcher’s emergency headquarters by telephone, it is said that it was the Prime Minister who opened the conversation with a cheery: ‘Are you having a wonderful time?’
Queen of the World: Elizabeth II: Sovereign and Stateswoman Page 47