Arriving in Greenwich (British Pathé)
At 9.40 am, with a loose flotilla of fifty boats jostling behind them, Erroll Bruce asked Giles to slip the mooring lines and off they cast. Gipsy Moth IV looked her very best: garlanded with signal flags and burgees, an Australian Ensign off her jib shroud, her mizzen topped with a Royal Yacht Squadron White Ensign, she was suitably weather-scarred and thoroughly scrubbed. The Thames here is only 400 yards wide and on board they could see and hear the waving and cheering from an East End long since redeveloped and now no longer even particularly British, let alone Cockney.
Sheila in that red trouser suit and those sandals (British Pathé)
By 10 am they had rounded the loop where the Millennium Folly now sits and could see the domes and flags of Greenwich waiting for them a mile ahead. Behind them the pleasure armada whooped their klaxons and blasted their foghorns; some let off rescue flares. Erroll slowed her down; timing was everything. Down below, Gipsy Moth IV only had one mirror, a foot square, pitted affair in the main heads. Sheila and Francis did their best in front of it. Giles was on deck with the mooring lines. At exactly 10.15 am Erroll turned her into tide, throttled back and pulled up alongside: a perfect landing.
From Francis to Sir Francis (British Pathé)
On the pier naval cadets scrambled the mooring lines fast while the silver trumpets of the Royal Marines struck up a nautical fanfare echoing from the roof of the Painted Hall. On this cue, the Royal Standard and the flag of the Lord High Admiral were broken and the Queen’s Bargemaster, the stout and whiskery Albert Barry of the Royal Victorian Order, resplendent in scarlet court coat and waistcoat with gold sash and trimmings, long white socks and black brogues and cap, stepped on to the jetty and offered a welcoming hand to Sheila, then to Francis, Giles and Erroll. As they assembled ashore, legs not too wobbly, a guard of honour of Royal Watermen, more scarlet and gold brocade, garters and shining medals, formed to usher them up the crimson-carpeted ramp.
The silver trumpet fanfare was also the cue for the royal party to leave the Admiral President’s suite and make its way across the lower end of the Grand Quadrangle towards the pontoon. The crowd now took up the fanfare, cheering and clapping the Queen and Prince Philip. Vice-Admiral Lyddon and Sir Richard Colville followed a few paces behind, both in full naval pomp, followed by Mrs Morrison, Captain Kett and Sir Michael Adeane. Off-scene, Lord Plunket escorted two officers with the knighting sword and knighting stool respectively to their positions.
As the Chichester party walked through the Watergate, all black wrought iron and gold tridents, they found the Queen waiting for them. Francis, in his reefer jacket, was first to be received, taking off his cap and shaking her hand in a deep bow. Behind him Sheila, noticeably bigger-boned than her husband, in the bright red trouser suit, dark pink spotted scarf-cap and sandals, curtsied and waved forward Giles and Erroll, looking very much like younger and older versions respectively of Francis.
The royal convoy now walked quickly towards Plunket, who was standing on a plaque announcing the ‘BIRTHPLACE OF KING HENRY VIII IN 1491 AND HIS DAUGHTERS QUEEN MARY IN 1516 AND QUEEN ELIZABETH I IN 1533’. Francis rather uncertainly put his left knee on the stool and bowed his head. Plunket gave the Queen the historic sword and in one movement she dubbed his starboard then his port shoulder, saying: ‘I beg you to bestow the Honour of Knighthood and to be a Knight Commander for individual achievements and sustained endeavour in the navigation and seamanship of small craft.’ Sir Francis stood and bent his head forward so the Queen could place around his neck the pink and grey riband of a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire and pinned the star to his reefer jacket. She then moved down the line to shake hands with Lady Sheila, while Sir Francis could be seen looking up and smiling, almost to himself, at the Royal Observatory building on the hill overlooking them, the home of the navigators’ meridian.
The two parties now walked back towards the Watergate, the Queen alongside Sir Francis, Prince Philip alongside Lady Sheila and the others more loosely following behind. ‘Wave to them,’ the Queen told Sir Francis, ‘it’s your day.’ The Royal Watermen bristled to attention as they passed, and the Queen’s Bargemaster led the royal procession down the ramp towards Gipsy Moth IV.
At this stage the scene is lost from all our sources: the BBC, Pathé and Movietone news clips, not to mention my friend, neighbour and eyewitness to the day, Sir Jamie Chichester, the twelfth baronet, on a day’s leave from Eton. So we rely on Erroll Bruce’s account, kindly given to me by another friend and neighbour, his son Peter, an equally distinguished yachtsman:
The ceremony over, every item as precise as the Royal Household always makes such affairs, Sir Francis invited the royal couple to visit Gipsy Moth, and he told me to dig up a bottle of champagne that sailed around the world with him. When I struggled to open it, Prince Philip, who knew me quite well, relaxed the atmosphere by warning me ‘Look out, Erroll you’ll squirt champagne at Her Majesty’ and he duly earned a wifely reprimand. Francis gave the Queen and Duke each a small bale of the finest merino wool from the people of Australia. The whole great occasion over, I took the yacht off from Greenwich Palace Pier, then under Tower Bridge to berth on Tower Pier, where Sir Francis was welcomed by the Lord Mayor of London as the formal ending of a Londoner’s voyage.
If the reception from the Thames had been rather restrained and respectful of the royal moment, once clear of Greenwich all formality was forgotten as Gipsy Moth IV sailed on. The downstream flotilla had now been joined by their upstream sisters and as they passed under the huge raised arms of Tower Bridge, the Port of London fireboats let whoosh giant plumes of spray towards the sky, while the River Thames Police launches couldn’t resist whipping up celebratory doughnuts in the water. Every siren and klaxon and foghorn joined in the cacophony. Surrounded by such tribute, Gipsy Moth IV now looked tiny, almost frail, and on board the Chichesters tinier still, making Francis’s achievement seem all the more extraordinary. Ashore tens of thousands of well-wishers lined the river, waving and cheering in the sunshine from wharves and piers, warehouses and offices, embankments and bridges.
At exactly 12.20 pm Erroll Bruce made his second perfect landing of the day. On Tower Pier the Chichesters were greeted by the Lord Mayor of London, Sir Robert Bellinger, in full mayoral robes and chains, and Lady Bellinger in a brilliant lime-coloured suit and sporty bobble hat in blue, pink and white. It was hardly fair on red trouser suited Lady Sheila – but Lady Bellinger was Belgian and possibly didn’t understand. At least everyone at Greenwich knew that her outfit had been scuppered by the late royal change of plan; here, the press especially thought that Sheila wore a bright red trouser suit, spotty swimming cap and sandals to a banquet through choice. She was never to hear the end of it.
The Chichesters spent ten minutes on the pier, shaking hands with the great and the good of the City of London Corporation, posing for photographs and waving to the crowds. In the footage we can see Lady Sheila looking around for someone; then she waves to a small, elderly figure, a clergyman, on the edge of the pier; she tugs on Sir Francis’s jacket and they walk over to hug the famous and charismatic Revd ‘Tubby’ Clayton, the Chichester family spiritual exemplar and founder of the Toc H Christian charity for the wounded of war.
The procession now left the pier and the Chichesters were shown into a white 1964 Mulliner Park Ward Rolls Royce Silver Cloud III drophead coupé, with Sir Francis sitting high on the cabrio cover and Lady Sheila and Giles in the rear seats below. The Metropolitan Police had laid on two grey horses and four white-faired motorcycles as outriders, and off they all cast, up the hill past the Tower of London, turning left past All Hallows Church, where the ancient bells pealed out in greeting, along Eastcheap and into Cannon Street.
All along the route office workers in shirtsleeves and blouses leaned out of the windows, waving and cheering. Sir Francis looked up left and right and waved back. The pavements too were full of cheering and clapping well-wishers in their l
unch hour and by the time they reached St Paul’s Cathedral and doubled back up Cheapside and Poultry to Mansion House, Sir Francis had both port and starboard arms waving back to the crowds, high up to the open windows and low down to the brimming pavements.
Now the Chichesters had to make their last great public appearance of the day. From a specially made balcony between the Corinthian columns of Mansion House, they looked down on a crowd of 5,000 packed into Mansion House Street and Poultry. (In all, according to the Police, 250,000 Londoners turned out that day to pay tribute to Sir Francis.) Raising his hands to stop the cheering, the Lord Mayor said: ‘You personify all that is best in Britain – the spirit of initiative, adventure and determination. In the past eighteen months you commanded not only the attention but also the respect of the world. Your voyage has shown the world that Britons still have something which everyone needs – courage and resolution in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds.’ Then, to renewed cheering, the Lord Mayor gave Sir Francis a silver table decoration as a gift from the people of London. Inspired by a similar gift presented by an earlier Lord Mayor, James Harvye, to the earlier circumnavigating Sir Francis, Chichester’s orb, like Drake’s, had the waypoints of the voyage picked out in glowing rubies.
With a final wave the Chichesters entered Mansion House, descended the magnificent marble staircase and took their places at the top table in the Egyptian Hall. Sheila noted that, ‘The banquet was like a fairy tale; beautiful lifebuoys made of red and white carnations, the Royal Yacht Squadron colours – everything so exciting and so right’. They were clapped in to lunch with ‘Gaily Thro’ the World’ played by the Orchestra of Her Majesty’s Royal Marines. Full silver service luncheon was served.
After lunch the Lord Mayor gave a welcoming home speech, quoting Milton, Tennyson and, inevitably, Masefield:3
Mansion House luncheon invitation cover
I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,4
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by;
And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea’s face, and a grey dawn breaking.
Sir Francis, responding after a long-standing ovation, said that he was deeply moved. He gave thanks to the assembled company, and especially to Sheila for her encouragement and flair for understanding him and his quest. He said, inter alia:
‘Being so many months alone, I have seen what is valuable in my own life with brutal clarity, and also what is valuable on the national and international scene. It’s extraordinary how you feel the world should be run after being alone for so long.
I don’t think there is any truth in the rumour that Mr Wilson,5 after seeing Mr Heath6 in a yacht two weeks ago, is presenting Mr Brown7 with a yacht to sail around the world alone. I seem to realise that the terrific welcome I have received is not merely for me. It is a kind of symbol. This voyage of mine represents an independent effort – a private enterprise of the sort that appeals to the British mentality. It is not really suitable for his temperament to have a state or someone else to nurse him financially, physically, morally or anything else from the cradle to the grave.’
After lunch they clapped the family out as the orchestra played ‘Old Father Thames’. Outside, Francis put his sailing cap back on – with some relief, it appears – and waved to the few hundred well-wishers who were still waiting for him.
‘Are you contemplating a career in politics, sir?’, a journalist shouted.
‘Tell me if you hear of a good vacancy’, Sir Francis grinned back.
From the crowd a spontaneous round of ‘For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow’ sprang up, followed by a young ringleader in bright shorts shouting:
‘Three cheers for Sir Francis Chichester. Hip-hip!’
‘Hooray!’
‘Hip-hip!!’
‘Hooray!!’
‘Hip-hip-hip!!!’
‘HOORAY!!!’
With a final wave, the Chichesters settled into the back of a black mayoral Daimler Sovereign for the short ride back home. We don’t know if they were expecting another street celebration but as they turned left off St James’s Street into their own St James’s Place, that is exactly what they found. Francis’s friend and fellow sailor – and owner of the adjacent Duke’s Hotel – Harold Rapp, had teamed up with the Royal Ocean Racing Club, also on St James’s Place, and decked the street out in bunting. Residents and members lined the pavement, clapping and cheering. And there, waiting for them on the doorstep of no. 9, was Erroll Bruce, back from positioning Gipsy Moth IV in St Katherine’s Docks.
For the Chichesters this homecoming was the most emotional part of an intense and overwhelming day. Inside they flopped, drained yet elated. Among the many presents waiting for them were half a dozen bottles of J&B Rare Scotch Whisky from Justerini & Brooks just round the corner in St James’s Street. Erroll did the honours and four crystal clinks were met with four loud ‘Cheers!’ as laughter and relief filled the first-floor drawing room. It had been, everyone agreed, a most wonderful and triumphant day.
NOTES:
1. The sword is now on display in the wardroom at HMNB Devonport.
2. Francis loved the medical officer’s report: if Francis had been in the Navy he would be invalided out straightaway; on the other hand, a civilian doctor would probably prescribe a long sea voyage!
3. John Masefield had been the Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom from 1930 until his death two months before this reading.
4. Francis chose ‘The Lonely Sea and the Sky’ as the title for his 1963 autobiography.
5. British Labour Party prime minister at the time.
6. Conservative Party opposition leader at the time, a middling racing yachtsman, who became the worst prime minister of all time from 1970 to 1974.
7. George Brown, Wilson’s useless, drunkard deputy and rival.
If anything terrifies me, I must try to conquer it.
CHAPTER 2
Frying Pans and Fires
IT WAS NOT ALWAYS THUS. Sixty years earlier, when Francis was seven, his father thought it best to let professional bullies beat him instead; he sent Francis to boarding school. They chose a local Devonshire penal colony, then called Ellerslie House, later renamed Belmont House, about 10 miles away from his home village of Shirwell and just to the west of Barnstaple in the village of Bickington.
It would have been hell anyway but he had the misfortune of having his elder brother, John, there as a Senior Boy. John, five years older at twelve, had seven years of sibling vengeance to unload and now, with a gang behind him and their mother far away, he set about bullying young Francis relentlessly. Almost immediately a bit of prank in the showers backfired on Francis and John arranged for him to be sent to Coventry8 for three weeks. No boy dared, or even wanted, to speak to him. For Francis it was an inexplicable and unforgettable experience: ‘It seems hard to believe that senior boys would do such a thing to a 7-year-old new boy, just because of a stupid joke that went wrong.’
Worse was to come. Ellerslie had started off with good intentions as a parish school built in the grounds of a Bickington church. In 1899 it was enlarged and a very handsome two-storey neo-Georgian mansion built in its extensive grounds. The grounds were made into playing fields and the whole enlarged enterprise handed over to the Exeter diocese, which appointed a particularly nasty piece of work, Revd Douglas Martin Hogg, to be headmaster.
This pervert took an instant dislike to Francis’s independent spirit. Maybe he sensed that a bullied boy would be more fun to bully further. In his autobiography, written fifty-seven years later, Francis recalls that Hogg’s technique was to send the boys up to their dormitory to wait for their beatings there. In the dorm the boy would be left trembling with fear while Hogg trembled with anticipation below:
My first term I was up for a beating seven times. The headmaster, who was a big, powerful man, sent one up to the dormitory at a fixed time. Here, one waited beside
one’s bed. Being kept waiting was the worst part, and I couldn’t stop myself from trembling. He made us strip off our trousers, and beat us on the bare bottom. But not always. Sometimes he made us strip off and bend over, and then he didn’t beat us…
Ellerslie School
Nowadays social media would expose the perverts almost immediately, but until recently unsupervised, remote boys’ boarding schools were a magnet for sadists and child molesters, especially those of the frocked variety. They could, and knew they could, act out their most bizarre sado-sexual fantasies with complete impunity. Hogg obviously had his own weird fantasies, such as not beating boys but rather admiring their taut bare buttocks and trembling legs. (Of course it happened in girls schools too. My elderly neighbour was sent to a convent in Cumbria where she and the other girls were repeatedly whipped on their bare bottoms by the Mother Superior.)
To save money, Francis’s father – another horrid vicar – had his son board weekly at Ellerslie. Early every Monday morning the family’s groom-gardener, Wilkie, would rig up the horse and trap and deliver Francis to Hogg’s deprivations; every Friday afternoon he would collect him and deliver him to his father’s strictures. How Francis must have dreaded those journeys between fire and frying pan: seven years old and beaten by a martinet vicar at home and by a sadist vicar at school; subjected to his brother’s bullying all week and his father’s damnation liturgy every weekend.
Thankfully, his misery at Ellerslie only lasted a year as his parents changed schools, not because of the penal conditions but, as he noted rather sardonically, ‘Only because I was always ill there, which was a nuisance’.
Never Fear Page 2