We may earn commission on some of the items you choose to buy. As a result, some served for 20 years or more. The vessel sailed to Canada in 1991 and made a port of call in Toronto and Kingston, Ontario. The top aerial on the foremast and the top 20 feet (6.1 m) of the mainmast were hinged to allow the ship to pass under bridges. The Labour opposition announced it would not commit the use of public funds for a replacement vessel for at least the first two years of any new Labour government. She is the second royal yacht to bear the name, the first being the famous racing cutter built for The Prince of Wales in 1893. During the trip, the family would play games and have barbecues on the islands. The Royal Yacht Britannia played host to world leaders, kings and queens, celebrities, and VIPs, including Frank Sinatra, Nelson Mandela, Sir Winston Churchill and Liz Taylor to name just a few. Britannia was the first Royal Yacht to be built with complete ocean-going capacity and designed as a Royal residence to entertain guests around the world. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site. The ship’s bell for the Royal Yacht Britannia. A post shared by The Royal Yacht Britannia (@royalyachtbritannia). Britannia's racing flag is preserved at the Royal St. George Yacht Club, which held two regattas in Kingstown for the first season of the RYA linear rating rule in 1896. The royal family has a long history of seafaring—the first official royal yacht was the HMY Mary (HMY stands for His or Her Majesty's Yacht), gifted to Charles II by the Dutch in 1660. However, just two days after the John Brown shipyard in Clydebank, Scotland received the order the King passed away on February 6, 1952. Princess Margaret started the tradition in 1960 for her Caribbean honeymoon with Anthony Armstrong-Jones, a quiet, formal affair where dinners were taken in full evening dress every night. While working, the crew reportedly used hand signals to communicate rather than shouting orders, in order to maintain a sense of quiet and calm for the royal residents. In this time, Britannia steamed 1,087,623 nautical miles (2,014,278 km).[9]. [20] The Royal Deck Tea Room was added in 2009. During July and August, she is berthed in Oban Marina and is available for private charter, as she sails around the islands once visited by the Royal Family during their annual fortnight holiday in the Western Isles of Scotland. Although Britannia never served as a war-time hospital, in 1986, the Queen did send her to rescue British nationals and other persons who were suddenly trapped in the middle of an uprising in Aden, some of whom were injured. The crew got around this rather surprising pitfall by using voice pipes from the bridge to confer navigational orders. [8] The interiors were ultimately redesigned by Sir Hugh Casson and received very minimal updates throughout her 44 years of service. The original Britannia was built in 1893 for King Edward VII, the then Prince of Wales. Boris Johnson has been urged to consider sanctioning a successor to the Royal Yacht Britannia as a memorial to the Duke of Edinburgh, it emerged last … It seemed very fitting that, just as Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth was celebrating becoming the longest-serving monarch in British history, I should be visiting one of her most faithful and loyal servants. It was also the last ship in the royal navy where the crew members slept in hammocks, a practice that they maintained until 1973. US President Dwight D. Eisenhower was aboard Britannia for part of this cruise; Presidents Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton were welcomed aboard in later years. 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