PLATINUM JUBILEE MUSINGS

 The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee proved to be a fairly quiet event for this author. Looking back over the years when other royal celebrations occurred, this has not always been so!

During the Golden Jubilee in 2002 I was one of the lucky people chosen for the pageant that paraded down The Mall during the afternoon of June the 4th. It was of course viewed by Her Majesty the Queen and her entourage who were seated at the Queen Victoria Memorial in front of the entrance to Buckingham Palace. Collectively our group were representatives of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency. As such we formed up into three distinct parties : – coastguards past, Maritime & Coastguard Agency present and Maritime & Coastguard Agency future. I was a member of the former group and given descriptions that appear in my novel Farewell Chapelon, looking back that was highly appropriate. An old coast rescue cart, complete with ‘Board of Trade’ logo had been taken out of a museum and coupled to two beautiful Clydesdale horses. Those of us who accompanied the wagon were dressed up by costume specialists to look like period workers from a rural village who would have formed a coast rescue company. Cheered on by over a million people who were lining our route was an unforgettable experience.
There was a final added bonus too. In the early evening after the main parade, we were in an ideal location to view the Golden Jubilee air display as it flew over The Mall. The finale were The Red Arrows in formation around Concorde. I remember staring straight up into the latter’s jet pipes as it roared overhead. The last time I would see that particular aircraft fly.

Scroll back twenty five years to the Silver Jubilee in 1977. I was somewhere in the Antipodes as a deck officer on the MV Poyang, the ship on which MV Chapelon is loosely based. We were transiting the part of the South Pacific Ocean that lies between Noumea in New Caledonia and Auckland in New Zealand. Given the time difference between the UK and that part of the world, celebrations had already commenced. One one of his routine visits to the bridge I remember our captain saying that he had been listening to a radio broadcast from New Zealand where Sir Edmund Hillary, himself a native of New Zealand, was being interviewed to herald the start of the celebrations. That was very appropriate. On the same day that the queen acceded to the throne, Sir Edmund and Sherpa Tensing had been the first people to conquer Mount Everest.

In August 1980 Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother celebrated her 80th birthday. As patron of the Cinque Ports she decided to visit each, residing on the Royal Yacht Britannia that had berthed alongside the Prince of Wales Pier in Dover during her visit. Next to her was the Western Hoverport – and I was helping to pilot the mighty SRN4 hovercraft, the biggest and fastest amphibian in the world. It was August and on every departure for France we were fully laden with both passengers and cars. At the start of one such trip, while I was on the flight deck, the Red Arrows were putting on a special display over Dover Harbour with the castle forming an appropriate and dramatic backdrop. The royal party were out on Britannia’s deck enjoying the spectacle. I was totally occupied with my work, carefully watching an array of instruments while throttling up our gas turbines to ‘ten-fives’, the power setting needed to lift the craft and its heavy load on to her air cushion. Chuckling, our captain suddenly said, “The royal party are ignoring the red arrows, they have come over to watch us leave instead!”

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