Felt Like Royalty For An Hour
Pete DeVito
July 19, 2018
Recently while touring the British Isles my wife and I stopped off for a few hours and toured the Majesty’s Royal Yacht Britannia. The minute we stepped aboard, we felt like there should have been a waiter with cocktails, food and all that other stuff that goes with royalty.
The Royal Yacht Britannia was launched April 1953, it is 412 feet long with a beam of 55 feet. She can cruise at 22 knots with a range of 2,400 nautical miles. Now this is where it gets interesting. It has a crew of 271 along with 1 platoon of Royal Marines. When the yacht enters a port or stays in port while the Royal Family was onboard, the Royal Marines would dive twice a day in search of mines or explosive underwater devices.
When we entered the engine room it was spotless and mostly original. The fellow giving us the tour told us that when General Norman Schwarzkopf inspected the yachts engine room prior to his retirement the general said that’s a beautiful staged engine room now I want to see the real engine room. The last two hidden jewels to see were the Roll-Royce Phantom V state car from the 60’s that was kept on deck ready for the family transportation and the beautiful Royal Barge to tender ashore.
Early Photo of Britannia
