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.

Abandoned Churches

I have seen plenty of churches in my travels around Scotland. That is hardly surprising in a country of such ancient and deeply rooted Christian tradition. But they are not always what they seem.

The first church I visited in Scotland was two miles west of Lockerbie, the site of the Pam Am 103 disaster in 1988. There is no shortage of stories and conspiracy theories about that catastrophe. But this tiny and beautiful chapel embodies a dark story even more enthralling than the sabotage of the 747. It is signposted "Ukrainian Chapel" as a recognized tourist attraction. I had never heard of it and lost no time in checking it out. In a most unappealing semi-industrial yard, used mostly by a local bus company, there is a small WW2 type temporary hut which has survived long beyond its expected lifespan. It houses a beautiful Catholic chapel with lavish decoration and fittings in Ukrainian style. It was created by Ukrainian prisoners of war in the late 1940s and at first I assumed that it was a southern Scottish equivalent of the beautiful Italian chapel created by Italian POWs in the Orkney Islands. But these Ukrainians were hardly ordinary POWs. They served with the SS division "Galicia" on the Eastern front. This was composed of volunteers who, very understandably, wanted to resist Stalin's reconquest of their homeland. Unfortunately, they made a deal with the devil and fought under Nazi command, with a mixture of German and Dutch officers in control of the division.

The number of Dutch, Belgian and French units in the SS makes for a very interesting story and one not told much by historians or movie makers eager to glorify the well known heroism of those countries' anti-Nazi Resistance movements - most recently in Paul Verhoeven's ludicrous "Black Book". Most grimly hilarious of all is the story of Leon Degrelle and his Belgian SS unit which fought with incredible courage on the Estonian border early in 1944. In June 1944 they were welcomed home by cheering crowds in Brussels. Less than three months later the Brussels streets were swarming with exuberant citizens welcoming the British liberators. No wonder Degrelle is still a taboo topic in Belgium, years after his death in exile in Spain. But the Ukrainian collaborators have been visibly demonised to a much greater extent, even though proportionately fewer Ukrainians served under Nazi colours than those from Western Europe. After all, according to Nazi ideology, the Ukrainians, along with the Russians, Poles and Czechs, were sub-humans, fit only to be the slaves of the Master Race.

The explanatory notices inside the chapel inevitably had a flavor of embarrassed evasion on the motives and actions of the Galicia personnel. Apparently they did not wear the black German SS uniform, but a special grey uniform with the Ukrainian eagle. Well, thanks for the tailoring tip. Also the notice insisted that the Galicia division did not intend to fight against the allies. Er, excuse me, the Soviet Union WAS an ally of Britain and the USA, like it or not. And I did not see any mention of the Polish village of Huta Peniacka where part of the division slaughtered between 500 and 1,000 civilians in February 1944. How did this bunch of Nazi collaborators end up being welcomed to Britain and Canada in the late 1940s? It's a long story but by 1947 the Soviet Union had transmuted from brave eternal ally into sinister Communist tyranny. And any enemies of Communism were suddenly viewed in a much more favourable light; the British authorities were much less willing to send them back to almost certain death in the USSR.

I was the only visitor to the unlocked and unmanned Ukrainian chapel; it is just off the main road from England to Glasgow, so it is far more accessible than the Italian chapel on the Orkney islands. But it is hardly publicized for very obvious reasons and attracts far fewer visitors than its Italian contemporary.

In the small town of Thurso, on the inhospitable north coast, I looked for bed and breakfast after a long drive north. Almost next door to one B and B house, there was a very handsome church. On closer inspection it proved to be an ex-church; it is now the home for an undertaker firm. In the much bigger east coast city of Aberdeen I saw an even more splendid church in excellent condition. Again, as I approached the high gleaming newly glazed entrance, I discovered that it is now the offices for an accountancy firm. No wonder it had been so expensively restored. Accountants have done mighty well out of the economic changes of the last 25 years and Aberdeen has done even better out of 30 years of developing North Sea oil wells. Jesus would not be able to drive the moneychangers out of this beautiful temple; they legally own it.

I headed downtown to the Aberdeen Maritime Museum. Part of the Museum is now inside the former Trinity church, which had seats for a thousand worshipers in its glory days. It is almost the perfect symbol for the new gods of Britain. Much of the Maritime Museum is devoted to one activity - oil exploration. Passing mention is given to Aberdeen's centuries as a port for fishermen and cargo of all kinds. There are models of familiar trawlers and cargo and passenger vessels. But the biggest model I have ever seen dominates the central staircase cavity. A 1:33 scale model of an oil rig takes up most of the height of the museum. The original must be over 700 feet high, much taller than any cathedral, and this superbly engineered and detailed model is easily 25-30 feet high.

Some churches continue to serve the shrinking number of worshippers. The Cathedral of St Magnus in Kirkwall is an obvious community centre, not least because it is the largest auditorium in these isolated islands. In the little town of Dunblane, north of Glasgow. I visited one of Scotland's finest cathedrals. Like St Magnus, it is completely out of proportion to the small town around it. The last time I saw Dunblane Cathedral was on TV in 1996. It was the focus for community grief when a gunman entered the local elementary school and murdered 16 little children and their teacher. The children and their teacher, who died trying to shield them from the bullets, are buried in a common plot with a large memorial in the local cemetery. The sign outside the Cathedral shows that the minister is still the Reverend Colin McIntosh, who was there in 1996. Dealing with unbelievable world wide media exposure, he was the public face of Dunblane for many terrible months and he did his job with exemplary fortitude, dignity and compassion. He is one of the few clergy who can sympathetically counsel people in agony while upholding Christian teaching on the goodness of God and His providence, even in the presence of such horrible pain and mass bereavement.

The Rev Colin's example of Christian ministry and steadfastness was in sharp contrast to another story which was reported on radio as I drove around Scotland. Two male Anglican clergy had been "married" by a third member of the clergy. It brought to mind "Private Eye"'s merciless spoof of a Government AIDS campaign many years ago: "When you sleep with a vicar, you sleep with all his old boyfriends". A desperate Anglican bishop deplored this latest development, insisting, in true Anglican evasion mode, that people knew what the Anglican Church's teaching on sexuality is. Well, unfortunately, people do know what Anglican teaching on sexuality is (if they are the tiny minority who bother to inform themselves on religious matters). It is totally incoherent and chaotic. Having sold the pass on contraception over 70 years ago, the Anglicans have got no position where they can draw a line in the sand and consistently defend any unpopular teaching on sexual morality. And just about any teaching putting restraints on human sexuality is going to be unpopular with one pressure group or another and will give rise to hostile media pressure. So we have met another crisis which will undoubtedly lead to fewer worshippers and more churches abandoned, demolished or adapted for secular users.