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The Crown: all about Britannia, Queen Elizabeth’s “floating palace”

The awaited fifth season of The Crown opens with a surprise flashback of the Queen Elizabethplayed by Claire Foy, who names the Royal Yacht Britannia amid the shouts of jubilation. We are in 1954, the year after his coronation at the age of 27. The first episode, “Queen Victoria’s Syndrome”, then continues with a leap forward of almost four decades to show us the latest version of the elderly monarch, played by Imelda Staunton, in 1991, in the days when she was defined as “irrelevant. , old, expensive and detached from reality “by its once adoring subjects. The consensus for the Crown has dropped significantly.

The new season, which opens with Elisabetta now elderly, her nation’s desire for modernity and the global recession, not to mention the scandals that will soon involve her family members, suggests difficult times for our Queen. The first regret comes suddenly and concerns the Royal Yacht Britanniawhich with its exercise price of approximately $ 18 million per year and the need for costly improvements, is considered too lavish and unnecessary expense by public opinion.

Nonetheless, in an audience with Prime Minister John Major (Jonny Lee Miller), the Queen asks for additional funding. “All my palaces have been inherited,” explains the sovereign, with one of the least happy phrases that her character has ever uttered. “They all bear the mark of my predecessors. Only the Britannia I really managed to make it mine…. From the hull design to the smallest piece of porcelain, it is a maritime and floating expression of me ».

The Royal Yacht Britannia leaves Portsmouth, England, with the royal family on board for the traditional cruise around Scotland’s Western Isles on 7 August 1997.

By Tim Graham Photo Library / Getty Images.

The 125-meter royal yacht, built to replace her predecessor, the Victoria and Albert, was a real joy for Queen Elizabeth and became the backdrop for many happy family memories. The construction of the yacht came at a difficult time for the royals, shortly after the coronation of a young Elizabeth and the forced renunciation of Philip’s naval career, his family name and his identity. The Britannia it became a sort of relief valve for Philip, who had served as commander in the Royal Navy and was able to oversee the technical aspects of the yacht’s design. The Queen, for her part, took care of the chintz fabrics and the details, including the knobs and lampshades. This is the only house that Elisabetta and Filippo have helped to design, also equipped with a bolt-on piano for evening singing, framed family photos, travel memories from all over the world and an open deck furnished with wicker furniture.

As the Queen and Philip used the yacht during their long tours in the Commonwealth, the floating palace also had formal accommodations suitable for housing 13 US presidents, including Eisenhower, Ford, Reagan and Clinton. In addition to a grand staircase, silver and crystal crockery and a cellar, the Britannia it had a state dining room, large enough to seat 100 people, which could be transformed into a private cinema on occasion.

The privacy the ship provided is one of the reasons the Queen described it as “the only place where I can truly relax.” According to Sally Bedell Smith’s biography, Elizabeth the Queen. The life of a queen, on board Elisabetta even put aside her skirts and dresses. “It was one of the few occasions the Queen wore pants, except when he went horseback riding or took part in field sports, especially so that he could easily (and modestly) get on and off the ladders or on the spears when they reached the deserted beaches for picnics ashore, ”Smith wrote. The Britannia it also offered the queen other opportunities to play with informality. For example, the sailors aboard “when on the high seas did not wear their caps, which meant they were technically in civilian dress and not required to salute, allowing the Queen to walk the ship without the need for a formal recognition », wrote the NewYork Times in 1983, adding that the sailors did their best to be invisible to the monarch. “They have been trained to carry out orders on the upper deck, where the Queen’s private quarters are located, without words or commands.”

The yacht was also a memory linked to some moments dear to the family. In 1954, the yacht’s maiden voyage reunited the Queen and Philip with their young children, Carlo and Anna, after almost 18 months away. (“The ice broke very quickly and we were subjected to frantic activity and countless questions that left us breathless,” the Queen told her mother.) Since the 1960s, the royal family ushered in the tradition of an annual cruise across the western isles of Scotland to reach Balmoral for the holidays, with stops for picnics and a visit to the Queen Mother at Castle of Mey. There was a water slide on which family members gleefully launched themselves and humorous performances put on by the staff. (The former cook of the yacht – who has served aboard for 16 years – recently recalled that the Queen and Philip “laughed out loud at our antics.”) When Anna turned 21, she is said to have celebrated in the State Dining Room, transformed into a ballroom complete with floor.

Inside the queen’s private parlor cabin, with a miniature telephone switchboard on the desk.

By ANL / Shutterstock.

On tours to Commonwealth countries, the royal family traveled aboard the ship for weeks and even months. Once, on his 1956 tour from Australia to British bases in the Antarctic, Philip spent four consecutive months on the Britannia. (“We have fabulous parties when the Queen is not there and the Duke is on board”, confessed a crew member in 1976.) These voyages were supported by an incredibly large staff: 20 sailors who lived, slept and worked aboard, as well as some 45 royal house staff and, occasionally, a ‘contingent of 26 members of the Royal Marines gang to accompany foreign dignitaries, ”according to LA Times. The craft was also large enough to carry various other means of transportationincluding a royal launch, two speedboats, a pair of 4-meter sailing dinghies, plus a Range Rover and a Rolls-Royce for ground transportation.

In 1993, Labor MPs pointed out that that “floating palace” was the most expensive item in the budget of royal travel, for a total of approximately $ 18 million in annual maintenance costs. Politicians stressed the uselessness of the yacht by denouncing that the ship, which had already cost $ 150 million in renovations and repairs, had been used for only 31 days in 1991.

Grudgingly, the Queen agreed to dismantle the yacht in 1997, after 43 years of use and over a million miles traveled. “In the end, the Britannia it had become the symbol of politically incorrect extravagance and a privilege that weighed on the public budget, and the Queen told the government she was ready to give it up, ”Smith wrote in his biography. But before the yacht was disarmed in Portsmouth, the royal family and courtiers boarded for a last lunch in the State Dining Room and for a tour of the ship – her “country house at sea” – which had served the Queen so well. An account of the emotional farewell is included in Smith’s biography of the queen:

It was terrible and he criedSaid one of his courtiers. The ceremony on the quay, conducted by the Navy chaplains and attended by 2,200 former officers and sailors of Britannia, was followed by a television audience of millions of people. As the Royal Marines band pulled away, he sang Auld Lang Syne and said goodbye to the yacht for the last time. The Queen, dressed in red, put a black gloved hand to her eye and wiped away a tear. Some press commentators criticized her for crying over a simple ship. But for the Queen and her family, Britannia held decades of memories. “She wasn’t just a place of work,” said a lady-in-waiting. “It had been their houseboat.” More than anything else, the royal yacht “meant freedom to her,” reported one of the Queen’s relatives.

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Source: Vanity Fair

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