Britannia Week - booze

Paradoxically, there’s enough booze on board to float the ship. Let’s start with the staterooms, cabins and function rooms, when the ship was acting as a floating palace (gin or otherwise) the Queen would be entertaining the great and the good of the nations being visited and to do that you have to have plenty of liquor. The booze doesn’t just circulate at parties, the cabins have cabinets of the stuff, the sun deck has a cocktail bar and as for below decks…each rank have their own bar!

The officers has an officer’s mess, with a bar and a lounge area, resembling a comfortable bar at a golf club (complete with a toy wombat that was used in high-spirited games of 'catch the wombat'). The non-commissioned officers have a respectable sized bar, like the bar and function room at a working man’s club with aspirations. Finally the ordinary sailors have their own little bar, cramped, comfortable and cosy this is the least pretentious, most honest and by far the most welcoming of the bars on board, it’s the sort of wee snug country pub that you might find at the end of a walk in the Lake District – except it’s squeezed in below decks next to the sleeping quarters – it’s OK though, there’s a curtain to separate dozing sailors from revelling crew.