Britannia Week - the ship

The Royal Yacht Britannia is now moored at the Port of Leith, in Edinburgh. I suppose that, officially, it is decommissioned. Such an odd word, used to describe nuclear warheads when their plutonium heart is removed, but not, I think, appropriate here. The purpose of Britannia was, secondarily, to convey the Queen of the greatest country on the face of the planet around the world (well, the bits accessible by water) in an appropriate style but the primary purpose was to sit anchored in the bay, looking fabulous and representing a bit of Great Britain come to visit your country (and oh, is that a type 42 destroyer behind it, don’t worry, that’s just here for your protection, now sign those mineral rights over and you can come and meet the queen).

If the purpose of Britannia is to convince people that Britain is indeed Great, then it has not been decommissioned in any sense. I walked onto that ship a staunch republican, a view formed by many years careful consideration and one that has been baked to the point of bullet-proof hardened opinion by years of debate, revisitation and assuaging of doubt about whether it was possible to be a patriotic republican.

I walked off a Monarchist and an imperialist. In my defence, I’m pleading seduction.

There’s much to be seduced by. Firstly, the ship is beautiful, not like those huge white private yachts you see in the papers these days, which come with their own helipad, swimming pool, tennis court, greyhound track and missile defence shield (BTW: if you are sold something as an optional extra that you have only previously heard of on ‘Star Trek’, it is because your gullibility is only exceeded by your wealth) and, no doubt, a troop of heroin-addled sex trafficked eastern Europeans below decks.

No, if you’re going to have a big white yacht, it needs to be crewed entirely by lesbians and have a hope port of your secret volcano base where you plan to take over the world.

Britannia’s lines are beautiful. It has no helipad, it has launches. It also comes with quite a few extras, of which more later.


Inside, it’s understated, designed to look like an English country house. Indeed it resembles Churchill’s home; Chartwell and is also reminiscent of Hemmingway’s home in Cuba. Can it really be true that all you need is a sofa and a table, and a bloody huge well stocked drinks cabinet? It may be that the three are reminiscent because the style is early 20th Century. The reason for this is obvious, if you are the Queen, you only need to buy stuff once, because it never wears out. The telephones still in use are the same as those used at Buckingham Palace and are delightful wood and bakelite affairs. One thinks them quaint until one realises that they have a button on them that reads ‘the Queen’. Got an app for that? Thought not.

Modern houses, with their flat sceen tellys and games consoles and so much crap could take a lesson from Britannia. Elegance is a few seats and a piano. Okay, so HMQ was able to have Noel Coward at the ivories, but the point is Ikea and clutter is not the way forward.