THE
ROYAL YACHTS
By Richard Johnstone-Bryden, Part 4 Thanks to Prince Philip, the new Elizabethan era saw a return to royal yachting, after two wedding presents
BLUEBOTTLE and COWESLIP
Above: Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh Above right: Bluebottle at Cowes in 1957, with the young Prince Charles, Uffa Fox and Prince Philip on the helm Below right: Prince Phliip prepares the rig of Bluebottle with Uffa Fox
58 T CLASSIC BOAT MAY 2012
he Royal Family’s participation in the sport of yachting temporarily ceased following the death of King George V in 1936 and the scuttling of his beloved Britannia. During his brief reign, King Edward VIII’s private boating activities were restricted to chartering Lady Yule’s 250ft (76.2m) motor yacht Nahlin for his infamous cruise of the Adriatic with Mrs Simpson in August 1936. This elegant motor yacht was designed by GL Watson & Co and built by John Brown & Co, thereby linking her to the Royal Family’s two Britannias. Nahlin subsequently caught the eye of the Romanian King Carol II, whose government purchased her in 1937 and renamed her Luceafarul. The outbreak of World War II, followed by King Carol’s abdication, brought Nahlin’s brief career as a royal yacht to a close. She subsequently became the flagship of the Romanian Navy before the Communist Government issued orders for her transfer to the state shipping company as a passenger ship. Unsurprisingly, she proved poorly suited to her
mundane new role and was reassigned to the state hotel and restaurant company. She spent the next 35 years as a floating hotel/restaurant in Galatz before William Collier and Nicholas Edmiston took on the challenge of navigating their way through the volatile politics of the post-communist era to rescue her from the Danube. In 2010, their efforts culminated in the successful conclusion of a five-year restoration project carried out under the supervision of GL Watson & Co at the Nobiskrug shipyard in Rendsburg and Blohm & Voss Repair GmbH in Hamburg. Now owned by the British inventor Sir James Dyson, Nahlin is one of the last great steam yachts of the prewar era to survive. Within four months of returning from his Adriatic cruise, Edward VIII abdicated and was succeeded on the throne by his brother the Duke of York as King George VI. Although the new King and his wife, Queen Elizabeth, enjoyed sailing, His Majesty disliked the atmosphere of Cowes Week, so it wasn’t until after World War II that royal patronage of yachting was
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