Life on Board

I spent less than two days on the Orkney Islands. I had seen most of what I wanted to see, the weather was abysmal (either raining or about to rain, cold and windy), the landscape was unrelentingly bleak and treeless and I was getting twitchy at the perception of confinement. I could not drive more than twenty miles in any direction and to go further you just have to fork out for a ferry ride. It cost me £40 to cross to the island and £57.50 to go back to the Scottish mainland by a longer route. £97.50 or nearly $200 for two short trips. Holy cow. This was more than my return flight to Milan in March.

Worse than the money was the dependence on the limited ferry timetable and limited space on the boats. I turned up at the ferry terminal at 1025 for the 1100am sailing. I had not made a reservation. The efficient and charming young lady checked her PC and said that I was first in the "stand-by" queue. As it was Saturday, there were no trucks booked on the ferry, so there was a good chance that my little car could be accommodated - but no guarantee either. She asked for my "islander number" which gives a discount to island residents, but being a foreigner I had to pay the full £57.50. I also had to produce photo ID, even though I was traveling on a British vessel between two British ports. This extra security check was introduced a few weeks ago. It is plainly another moronically useless "security" process which makes us no safer. As the French commander remarks acidly in the superb "Battle of Algiers", the people who are going to have all their papers in perfect order are the terrorists.

I joined the end of the queue of cars and was finally waved on board. I rarely travel on ships. One of our best journalists commented over 40 years ago that the only vessel with the barest rudiments of comfort or safety was the 80,000 ton "Queen Mary" - in dry dock. I am firmly of that school of thought, partly because of the horrible journeys I endured as a child on the ferries to and from Ireland. They were inevitably hot, uncomfortable and desperately overcrowded with minimal facilities. And I was inevitably seasick. Mercifully this vessel heading back to Scotland was new, smooth, spacious and comfortable, with TV lounge, shop and restaurants. The TV showed the Queen at the annual ceremony of Trooping the Colour in London - enjoying glorious sunshine. To port you could enjoy the sight of the thousand foot high cliffs on the island of Hoy and the huge rock pillar "The Old Man of Hoy" beloved of especially insane mountaineers.

I was checking out Her Majesty's former floating home a few days later in Leith, the port of Edinburgh. All I knew about Leith was its use in the old police test for sobriety in the days before modern alcohol measurement devices could be used on drunken drivers. Allegedly the police would ask a suspect drunk driver to walk along a straight line while reciting the sentence: "The Leith police dismisseth us". I can think of plenty of people who couldn't do this if they were stone cold sober. Leith, like many ports, had a reputation for poverty and crime. It has been given a major facelift recently. Along the waterfront there is an enormous shopping mall with loads of designer shops, restaurants and coffee shops. From the third floor, you can pay £9.25 ($18.50) and gain admission to the retired Royal Yacht, Britannia. After serving as the Queen's floating palace from 1954 to 1997, it is now a museum run by a charitable trust.

It is one enthralling tour, made all the more enjoyable if you have done some background reading on the Royal Family. I can recommend Kitty Kelley's riotously funny compilation of Royal gossip, "The Royals". Probably the best quote (out of hundreds of unforgettable examples) is the occasion when the Queen's sister Princess Margaret was asked: "How is the Queen?" "Which one do you mean - my mother, my sister or my husband?" (Her husband Antony Armstrong-Jones notoriously swung on both sides of the bed). Margaret was plainly an exceptionally unpleasant person, but I was prepared to forgive her a lot for that.

Kitty Kelley's book is banned from normal sale in this so-called free country, probably because of the insinuation that Her Majesty might not be the genetic child of her putative father King George 6th. If all the insinuations in the book were tested by an independent DNA check, I feel sure that the history books and the official family trees would need drastic revision. Sure enough, the whole menage of adulterers, philanderers, skinflints, bastards, sodomites, bulemics and general nutcases which comprise our beloved Royals are generously represented throughout this superbly preserved ship. Nearly all of them have enjoyed its luxury features at one time or another and their smiling faces are preserved on the numerous photographs around the walls.

It is especially fascinating as the place where Naval tradition and Royal protocol overlapped in bizarre ways. Royal Navy vessels have always been very stratified societies, and Britannia is no exception, with separate living quarters for the Admiral, officers, petty officers and other ranks. This relatively small ship had an Admiral as its commanding officer in charge of around 220 men who supported every facility: engines, air conditioning, cleaning, catering, mailroom, laundry, navigation, communication and much more. The Admiral was the only officer with tolerable living quarters. He had his own bedroom, bathroom and study/living room/dining room. The deputy commander had one small cabin and everyone else shared sleeping quarters in various levels of overcrowding. Petty officer bunks were two high and the junior guys had triple level berths.

The Royal quarters were on another planet. Her Majesty naturally had sheets with the Royal emblems embroidered on them. Above her bed the silk decoration on the wall cost £450 (around $1,300) in 1954, i.e. an average joe's annual pay. The telephone switchboards (with switches labelled "Captain", First Lady in Waiting", etc) were the same as those in Buckingham Palace. The dining room seated 54 people. Menus, printed in French, were handed to each guest and could be taken away as a prized souvenir. Special pantries accommodated the priceless china, silverware and other essentials. Around the walls there are numerous gifts given to the Royal family on their travels, such as a ceremonial pig killing knife from the New Hebrides - you don't see many of those.....

Storerooms and coldrooms contained masses of food and drink, included the best wines. A garage on the upper deck could protect the Rolls-Royce, though in later years a local limousine was used in each port of call and the garage was used for other storage. Various small boats hung from davits. A 40 foot long launch, with its own air conditioned cabin, was used to transport the Royals ashore if Britannia was anchored away from a quayside.


The Queen and her husband, the Duke of Edinburgh, had separate bedrooms, bathrooms and offices. This was especially convenient as, shortly after Britannia entered Royal Service, the Queen found that her husband was bedding her first cousin Princess Alexander. So their marriage ended in the Biblical sense in 1955 and they could lead their separate lives.

The senior to junior Royal staff members had varying degrees of accommodation on board, according to their stations in life. So many of her staff - her personal secretary, her ladies in waiting, wardrobe mistress, chefs and personal doctor - all came along for the ride and had to be housed. Royal mail was flown out each day for Her Majesty's attention. 5 tons of luggage came on board for Royal use.

One especially irritating piece of baloney fed to the British public for decades was the line that Britannia could be adapted for use as a hospital ship if needed. Of course this was never done, even at times such as the Falklands war when every available vessel, such as the liner QE2, was scraped up for military service. Given that Britannia has a two bed sick bay and a tiny operating room, it is plain that this was just another feeble official lie.