Rule Britannia: Life on board the royal yacht

CLYDE-BUILT in 1953, the royal yacht travelled around a million miles over more than 40 years before tying up in 1997 to become a major tourist draw in Leith. Now, as her barge prepares for the Diamond Jubilee Thames Pageant, former crew, known as Yotties, tell Lee Randall what life was like on board.

HER unique dark blue hull betrays no signs of rivets or a name, but the royal crest and gold-leaf stripe tell you this ocean-going vessel is something special. Built in 1953, in Clydebank, the Royal Yacht Britannia served for more than 40 years, covering more than a million miles and making 968 official visits. The ship was decommissioned on 11 December, 1997, in Portsmouth, and is now one of Scotland’s most popular tourist attractions. And Britannia’s Royal Barge will play a starring role in the Diamond Jubilee Thames Pageant this June, carrying the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh at the start of the procession. But what was life like for the Royal Navy seamen working on the royal yacht? This week, to kick off the Jubilee celebrations, some 70 “Yotties” returned to ship, and I took the opportunity to find out. Here are some of their colourful stories of life on – and off – the high seas.

DAVE RUSHFORTH (1976-79)

I WAS one of the chief petty officers in the engine room who operated and maintained all the machinery: the generators, the evaporators for making water, the air conditioning and refrigeration plants, the boilers, the steam turbines, the pump rooms, and the steering gear. The machinery ran 24 hours a day. Away from home, we rarely took shore power, so the boilers would have to be fired and the generators run to provide electricity. When we went deep sea, if we had a problem and needed a spare part, then we made one in the workshop. It was the middle of the ocean, with no B&Q, so we just got it fixed!

I joined in the middle of a very big refit, after which we did the American Bicentennial and the Montréal Olympic Games. On Boxing Day, 1976, we sailed across the Atlantic, through the Panama Canal, and into the Pacific. We painted the ship and went down to Rarotonga, Tahiti, and picked up the Queen to do the Southern Hemisphere Silver Jubilee tour. We then did a tour of the UK and the West Indies. We did 44,000 nautical miles – the most miles [covered] in any one year.

We always visited the Western Isles, which the Royal Family loved. And, of course, that was the start of the Queen’s holiday, because we always ended up in Aberdeen. The Queen would go to Balmoral, and we would sail back to Portsmouth and await the next call for royal duty. We normally had 18 months’ notice, so we knew what was going to happen – down to the exact hour.

Some of my most memorable moments were things like the royal concerts. Me and my friend did classic sketches from the Two Ronnies, but because we were engineers we were The Two Grimeys. The Queen was closer to me than you are sitting now. I could have put my hand out and touched her. And you know the greatest thing? We made her laugh!

Another tremendous moment was the 1977 fleet review. It was the only time we saw the Queen dressed as the Lord High Admiral, with the cape and tiara. I’ve got a photograph of her talking to Sir Henry Leach, who became the first Sea Lord, who became Margaret Thatcher’s adviser in Whitehall when the Falklands War was on. We carried a permanent photographer on the yacht and all the photographs were black and white, so he could develop them. He had a little space just behind the engine room on the top level, and his red light was always on. Anything that happened on here was photographed.

Playing golf at Windsor was another fabulous memory. Once, The Queen was walking the dogs, the Duke of Edinburgh was driving his carriage and four, Princess Anne was riding her horse, and the Prince of Wales was landing his helicopter – all in the back garden of Windsor!

It was truly exciting working on the yacht. People need to be aware of how much revenue this vessel brought into the country, though it was intangible and never appeared on a balance sheet. On sea days we would take out captains of industry. The Queen would allow this vessel, her home, to be used as a focal point for trading partners to get together. What went on behind those closed doors? Who knows? But it sure generated imports and exports. We always kept the door of the engine room open, for air flow, and when the royal staff came on board they would stick their heads in and wave. You felt like part of the team – and the object of that team was to make sure that we made everything as correct and as comfortable as we could for a very important passenger.

JEFF STODDARD (1971-79) and LES BROOKS (1974-85)

LB: I WORKED in the ward room galley but when the Royal Family came on board, myself and the chief cook worked in the royal kitchens. It gave me a good foundation in catering. I had a lot of good jobs after I left the royal yacht, as a cookery instructor and working privately for an admiral.

JS: I worked in the main galley. We had 250 hungry sailors to be fed three times a day. We had to prepare chips for two meals a day – if chips weren’t on the menu there’d be a mutiny.

Stoddard and Brooks explain the complicated three-day shift system that meant starting one day at 8am, and finishing 12 hours later, only to start again from 4am until midday, and on the third day, working from 8am until about 2pm.

JS: If you’re alongside you could go ashore, if you were at sea, you probably came back about four or five to help make the bread, then came back and baked it later and helped with the evening meal. It was hard work, but it was good. From where the main galley is, the servery is two decks down, so everything came down on a dumb-waiter. One day on royal duty, I was setting up the counter. Rather than closing the shutter of the dumb-waiter, I’d left a gap of a couple of inches. This hand came through to take a chip. Somebody who was escorting this person round knew I was behind there, and said: “Stoddard, don’t do that!”, because I was about to come down on the hand with a spoon. It was the Duke of Edinburgh. Phew!

LB: We had an allowance of maybe £1.50 a day per person for three meals. From Scotch eggs to croquettes, croissants and Danish pastries, everything was home made. The Royal Family brought their own head chef.

JS: When you’re at sea, apart from work, there’s not a lot else to do but eat. It was basic food, what people nowadays call comfort food. One favourite dish was called Babbie’s Heads – steak and kidney puddings – because the individual ones, when you turn them out, that’s what they look like. The sailors also loved Cheesy-Hammy-Eggy – creamed cheese with eggs in it, and a slice of ham on toast. A kipper was called a Spithead Pheasant – Spithead is a place off Portsmouth.

LB: A Train Smash was tinned tomatoes and leftover breakfast, all mashed together.

JS: And Yellow Peril was smoked haddock.

LB: On the royal side, all menus were done in advance. Sometimes the family would arrive at 7pm and the dinner was 8:15pm, and all the staff arrived at the same time as the Queen. We’d start working in the Ward Room galley three or four days before they were due, and would have 90 per cent of that royal meal ready, because what if the Queen arrived and the staff were delayed? When it was royal duty, it was electric on the day. Unbelievable.

JS: You all knew your job and if the royals approached you, it was just stand to attention, bow your head, speak only if spoken to.

LB: There was not a lot of training in protocol, but because the yacht’s one big family, the people you’re working for looked after you.

JS: You were given a little brief and one fact that came across was that this was the one royal residence the Queen could call home and truly relax in.

Like Rushforth, the chefs relish memories of the royal concerts.

JS: What we called Sod’s Opera, in the navy.

LB: We all did turns!

JS: At one concert Princess Anne, along with two of the secretaries, put on bikini tops and grass skirts and danced away – but nobody ever sees a photograph of that!

LB: When royal duty started, from the minute the Queen stepped on board ship until she left, we never got leave. My first actual big tour, to Australia and New Zealand, I only saw the gangways while bringing the food on! Seven weeks, that was. But that’s part of the game.

JS: In lots of ways our days here set us up for our naval careers. We both left within a year of each other, and both ended up as Royal Navy cookery instructors, and living within streets of each other. And there were other perks. I’d been here about 18 months when there was an invitation to have lunch and a tour of Buckingham Palace. I took my mother. And for a sports fan – I worked my leave so that I went to the Commonwealth Games in Christchurch and attended every athletics session. Two years later we were at Montréal for the Olympics. I went to more Olympics there than I’m going to see in London this summer. The 1977 Bicentennial Test match was played in Melbourne, and I was there. Within ten days of joining the yacht, our cricket team played the royal household at Windsor Castle. They were marvellous days out.

LB: I played hockey and cricket for Britannia, and we had some very tough games. Around 1977, we played hockey at the Adelaide Oval, which, as a cricket fan, was fantastic. And sometimes we’d end up playing football in one of the big stadiums. Football-wise, we had an exceptional team. We were the first ship for 70 years to actually get to the Navy cup final. Think about it: there were 250 of us, but they had all of the country to pick from.

JS: It was a privilege to serve on board, and the things it brought with it are just unbeatable and unbelievable.

LB: It was a good life. I wouldn’t change it. If I could live it again, I’d do the same.