I floated this question (no pun intended) in June in SDMB’s Cafe Society, but drew few responses.
I love ships and naval history, and was sorry when the British decommissioned Her Majesty’s Yacht *Britannia * a few years ago but didn’t build a replacement.
The ship was a classy and secure way for the Royal Family to travel, was an impressive symbol of Britain abroad, was used a lot for trade conferences and the like (thus helping the British economy), and could be converted for use as a hospital ship in wartime (although this was never done, even during the Falklands War, she did help rescue refugees twice).
I understand it’d be a pretty expensive proposition, but… why not build a new one? If Tony Blair doesn’t want to ask Parliament to appropriate the funds (politically unpopular, I know), couldn’t the Queen get a loan (there must be plenty of banks that’d be glad to lend her the money) or dig into her own purse (she IS the wealthiest woman in Britain after J.K. Rowling, IIRC), and build one herself? Hell, she might even find a shipyard eager for the prestige of being known as Yachtbuilder to the Queen that would give her a steep discount or even (less likely) do the job gratis.
H.M. could then donate the new yacht to the nation and have it commissioned into the Royal Navy, with the proviso that the Royal Family got first dibs on using it.
I suppose that nobody in the decision chain really wants one. (I have long been of the opinion that the US President needs a new railcar. Nobody ever asks me.)
I see you’re from Cleveland, William V. They have a long history of heavy manufacturing up there, including shipbuilding. In recent years, they built many of the structures necessary for the oil & gas industries in the North Sea. Maybe you could enquire of one of the companies along the banks of the Tees. Easy to float the boat under the Transporter Bridge.
Oh, wait. You probably don’t mean the Cleveland of Middlesbrough, Stockton and Hartlepool, do you?
So, from a family with a lot of shipbuilding experience then? Ahem: you probably couldn’t be further from the sea than Stoke-on-Trent (although nowhere in Great Britain is more than 72 miles from the coast. FACT!).
I think when you posted this same issue before I opined that it would be very unlikely that any British boat builders (Harland & Wolf? Swan Hunter? both probably gome belly-up years ago) would actually be capable of constructing a new Royal yacht so that it would have to be built abroad. Now that would be embarrassing for HM the Q, wouldn’t it?
Hospital ship? When did the Navy last have a dire need for one of those?
‘Impressive symbol’? Doesn’t every two-bit millionaire own a big boat nowadays?
And how much was Britannia really used for conferences? And if this really was a relevant factor, hiring out a few rooms in one of the palaces would be a much more profitable option.
Now, now. I didn’t claim to have any shipbuilding experience. I was just noting that, although I don’t hail from the UK’s Cleveland, I do have some British roots.
Does mean you could at least provide some backup, rather than chucking out a bald, contentious, partisan assertion. Given that the replacement was to be funded with defence money, and considering our subsequent military commitments, it looks like a rather sensible move to spend less on a glorified gin palace, and more on actual defence.
For exactly none of which the Britannia was required; it was never used in such a capacity. It seems that if a Royal Yacht is not required once for this purpose in almost 50 years, it might be cheaper to just hire a suitable vessel in the hugely unlikely event that one is needed.
I’d have thought that the possibility that the navy could requisition the boat at any time for a multitude of reasons would make for a very difficult-to-market high-end conference venue.
It is neither, and you do yourself a disservice by so stating.
Where to start? So many places. The muted celebrations of the Golden Jubilee, there not being seperate VE Day and VJ Day celebrations, that incident with Black Rod, the plain fact that most of the Labour party are socialists…
What on earth do VE & VJ celebrations have to do with the monarchy? If your second example is so far off the mark, it doesn’t do your argument much good. And I certainly didn’t see muted celebrations of the Jubilee - I recall a huge fucking concert in Bucks Palace & The Mall. And I said modern Labour Party, because socialism has long been discarded by all those in positions of influence. So we’re left with ‘the incident with Black Rod’. Concrete proof, if ever I saw it…
Because having one celebration for each would have given the Queen two sessions in the limelight. Tony Blair does not like anyone else in the limelight.
You obviously don’t recall the Silver Jubilee celebrations. Compared with that, the Golden Jubilee celebrations were a damp squib.
I disagree. The front men (Blair et al) pay lip-service to socialism, but they’re backed by dyed-in-the-wool socialists.