Regal and would-be Regal Yachts

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June 2023 edition of the Naval Historical Review (all rights reserved)

In the era just past we became accustomed to hearing of the Royal Yacht Britannia and there was a tinge of sadness when obsolescence and economies led to her demise. But what is a ‘royal yacht’? The term ‘yacht’ originates from the Dutch ‘jacht’ a light, fast sailing vessel used to pursue pirates in the shallow waters. The Dutch later used yachts for pleasure and these were known to King Charles II who during his exile spent time in the Netherlands. Upon his restoration to the English throne the King commissioned a series of royal yachts.

Britannia’s predecessor Victoria and Albert III literally came from the Victorian age, being launched in 1899 and decommissioned in 1939, spending the war years as an accommodation ship attached to the Portsmouth based gunnery school HMS Excellent.

The three yachts named Victoria and Albert were used in four great Fleet Reviews: the 1902 Coronation of King Edward VII, the 1911 Coronation of King George V, the 1935 Silver Jubilee of King George V, and the 1937 Coronation of King George VI. The latter occasion should have been the Coronation of King Edward VIII, but with his abdication the planned date was retained, with just some fine tuning of kings.

Royal yachts as floating palaces were never over large and could be uncomfortable on lengthy ocean voyages. Accordingly, a passenger liner was occasionally chartered for this purpose. In 1901 the Orient Company RMS Ophir allowed the future King George V and Queen Mary to tour the empire. And, in 1953-54 Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh travelled to many parts of the Commonwealth in the Shaw Savill liner Gothic.

Admiralty Yachts

Not to be outdone, the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty also needed a yacht. And in the early part of the 1900s, a very fine yacht they had in HMS Enchantress which was 320 feet in length and displaced 4000 tons. This coal burner could make 18 knots and had a complement of 200 officers and men. Winston Churchill, who became First Lord of the Admiralty on 25 October 1911, adored life aboard Enchantress and spent eight of his first twelve months in office aboard the yacht, often with his wife and friends, touring every naval base in the British Isles and the Mediterranean. One of the early official duties conducted by the new King George VI and Queen Elizabeth was a glittering state visit made to France in July 1938, when Enchantress was used as a royal yacht in preference to the aging Victoria and Albert. During this visit the King and Queen travelled to Villers-Bretonneux to unveil the memorial to Australian Imperial Forces who had died in France during WWI.

Personalities, Scandal and Yachts

Today we are enthralled by media hype associated with Prince Harry and Meghan and the dramatised version of events in the television documentary The Crown.

But this pales into insignificance when compared with the saga occurring some ninety years beforehand concerning Edward Prince of Wales and Mrs Wallis Simpson.

In January 1931 Thelma Furness, wife of shipping magnate Lord Furness, held a house party to which the Prince of Wales was invited. At the last moment two guests fell ill and their places were taken by an Anglo-American couple, Mr and Mrs Ernest Simpson.

Mrs Simpson was born Bessie Wallis Warfield, the only child of a prominent Maryland family. When aged 20 she first married Lieutenant Earl Winfred Spencer USN, a pioneer navy pilot who was eight years her senior.

Following the end of WWI Spencer became an abusive alcoholic and after several separations they divorced. Wallis (as she was known) accompanied her husband on a posting to the Far East where she met a young Italian diplomat, Count Galeazzo Ciano. It is alleged they had an affair with Wallis becoming pregnant, leading to an abortion which left her infertile. Other sources cast doubt on this story but there seems little argument to her having known Count Ciano and there was a medical episode during this period.

She next married Ernest Aldrich Simpson. Of Jewish origin, Simpson came from a family with global shipbroking interests who had settled in America. Shortly after graduating from Harvard he sought British citizenship and saw service during WWI when commissioned into the prestigious Coldstream Guards.

Although Mrs Simpson had lived in England for several years she clung to her American ways and spoke with a pronounced accent. Having angular features she was no great beauty, but none the less was attractive and always elegantly attired. She was intelligent and witty and knew how to flatter men. In particular, the Prince of Wales found her entertaining.

As the association blossomed the Prince invited the Simpsons to the Jubilee Ball at Buckingham Palace and later to Ascot. As divorcees were generally unacceptable in high society it was with great reluctance that the King agreed to the presentation of the Simpsons, which shocked the remainder of the Royal family.

The Yacht Rosaura searching for dragons

Walter Guinness was an Anglo-Irish soldier, politician and brewer of a famous beverage which made him immensely rich. An unassuming man, he fought in the Boer War and the First World War where he was awarded the DSO and later a Bar to the DSO for personal bravery. He developed an unusual penchant for railway ferries. In 1926 he bought the passenger ferry SS Canterbury and converted her to a steam yacht named Arpha. This first yacht may have been too small as she was later sold, and in 1931 he bought another passenger ferry SS Brighton and converted and renamed her as Roussalka. She hit an uncharted rock off the Irish coast in August 1933 and sank within minutes, thankfully without loss of life; amongst the survivors was her mascot, a pet monkey named Gandhi. Not wanting to remain yachtless, in the same year Walter Guinness bought yet another passenger ferry, SS Dieppe. She was converted, including diesel engines, and she was renamed Rosaura, the name of his daughter. Gandhi also transferred to Rosaura.

In 1934 Wallis ousted Thelma Furness as the Prince’s favourite and they began an affair. In August 1934 the Prince and the Simpsons were invited to join the Guinness family for a short Mediterranean cruise. Ernest was unable to go because of business commitments in the US. Wallis says it was during this cruise aboard Rosaura that she fell in love with Edward.

Walter Guinness (later Lord Moyne) and Winston Churchill were close friends and the former had a number of ministerial appointments. At the end of September 1934 Winston and Clementine Churchill took a cruise in Rosaura from Marseilles to Athens and Cairo where Winston enjoyed the sun, swimming and painting. Clementine acquired the travel bug as in January 1935, when Winston was politically engaged, she again joined Rosaura for an extensive cruise to the Dutch East Indies, searching for exotic Komodo dragons, before continuing to Australia and New Zealand. During this cruise, at Winston’s behest she conducted an extensive tour of Singapore dockyard. She fell in love with the fellow guest and suave art dealer Terrance Philip but luckily her marriage to Winston survived. Rosaura with her party returned safely to Southampton on 26 April 1935.

Rosaura was again requisitioned for war service in WWII as an armed boarding vessel. Under command of Captain Roland Spencer RD ADC RNR (a retired captain of the Queens) she left Tobruk on 18 March 1941 as part of a small convoy taking Italian prisoners of war to Alexandria. In addition to her crew she carried 400 POWs, ten military guards, two military officers and a war correspondent. While a passage had been cleared by a minesweeper, shortly after leaving harbour she struck a mine and quickly sank. Casualties included the deaths of 14 crew, five military guards and 59 POWs. The military contingent appears to have been drawn from 2/5 Battalion AIF as those who died were Australians from that battalion.

During WWII an important political position in the British Government was Minister of State for the Middle East, based in Cairo. From April 1942 to January 1944 the first incumbent was the eminent Australian Richard Casey, also with an impressive war record, awarded a DSO and MC. Later Lord Casey became Governor-General of Australia.

Richard Casey was on a Zionist hit list but being relatively unknown was only a marginal target. Next to fill this delicate political position was the high-profile establishment figure Lord Moyne. A few months into his tenure on 6 November 1944 Lord Moyne was tragically assassinated in Cairo by a Jewish terrorist group.

The Cruise of the Nahlin

Nahlin, meaning ‘Fleet of Foot’, had a figurehead of a native north American complete with feathered headdress. She was 300 feet (91.4 m) long, with a 36 feet (11 m) beam, drew 14.5 feet (4.4 m) and was powered by two steam turbine engines. She was built on the Clyde by John Brown immediately before they began work on RMS Queen Mary. Her owner was Lady Annie-Henrietta Yule, said to be Britain’s richest widow. With no expense spared she had six en-suite staterooms, a ladies sitting room, a gymnasium and a library. The Yules had made their fortune through monopolising the jute industry which, before the days of plastic, produced strong bags and sacks used for carrying all types of merchandise from coal to wheat. Between 1931 and 1934 the graceful Nahlin with her crew of over 50 took Lady Yule and her daughter Gladys on a world cruise which included Australia and New Zealand.

On 20 January 1936 King George V died, and the new King Edward VIII’s views on marriage led to a constitutional crisis, not only in Britain but throughout the Commonwealth.

Later in 1936 the King sought to escape with Wallis from media attention with another Mediterranean cruise planned. The King requested that His Majesty’s Royal Yacht Victoria and Albertbe made available. Prime Minister Baldwin would have none of it, no taxpayer-funded holidays for a King and his mistress. But the King would not be denied and against the wishes of his government leased Nahlin at his own expense.

Under a gentlemen’s agreement Wallis Simpson was largely kept out of British media reports at this stage while she was seeking an amicable divorce from her husband. Ernest went along with this but under British law it was easier to play an arranged charade claiming adultery which had to be proved by witnesses in court. The Simpsons were divorced with a decree absolute effective on 3 May 1937.

The cruise of the Nahlin became an important chapter in the short but sorry history of King Edward VIII. The King sought to join the yacht in Venice but the Foreign Office advised otherwise as Britain had imposed sanctions on Italy in response to the latter’s invasion of Ethiopia. Accordingly, a royal flight took Edward and Wallis to Salzburg in Austria and then they travelled by train to the almost unknown, and much less romantic, port of Sibenik, in Yugoslavia (now Croatia). The King and his official party joined the vessel on 10 August 1936 where they were welcomed by Paul, Prince Regent of Yugoslavia. They were now shadowed throughout the cruise by two destroyers, HM Ships Graftonand Glowworm.

The ship had been slightly altered for the royal visit. The owner, a strict teetotaller, had an extensive library. To meet the needs of the party-going King, who was no great reader, books were replaced by bottles. His Majesty also enjoyed golf, playing off a respectable handicap of 14, so a practice range was required with a plentiful supply of balls for his favourite pastime when at sea.

While the British media was quiet not so the Americans, where the voyage attracted a blaze of publicity. This meant that in the fishing village of Sibenik as many as 20,000 people came to farewell the yacht. The informality of the voyage together with the warmth of the Adriatic charmed and buoyed the spirits of the carefree party who enjoyed calling at quiet coves for swimming and picnicking.

At Corfu they were entertained by King George II of the Hellenes. King George was very unsure of himself having recently been recalled to his throne after eleven years of exile in England.

The voyage continued through the Corinth Canal to Athens and then through the azure Aegean Sea and its beautiful islands to the crusader castles of Rhodes. Here the ship developed engine trouble and Wallis developed toothache, but she refused to see a local dentist, insisting on an English dentist with the nearest located in the Egyptian city of Alexandria. Accordingly, another destroyer was despatched taking the good lady to and from her dental appointment, a round trip of some 750 miles (1200 km).

Following the Italian-Turkish War the picturesque island of Rhodes was occupied by Italy. When Nahlin called she was welcomed by Wallis’s old friend Count Ciano on behalf of his father-in-law, Prime Minister Benito Mussolini. Wallis and Ciano continued a romantic interlude while ashore. It was then on to Istanbul where they were welcomed by the imposing Turkish President, Kemal Ataturk, with the King able to converse with him in German.

For the King and most of his guests the cruise ended here as the Turkish authorities placed a special train at his disposal for the journey home. They proceeded via Sofia to be greeted by Tsar Boris III of Bulgaria, and Vienna where they were guests of Wilhelm Miklas, President of the first Austrian Republic. At Zurich they joined a royal flight taking them back to England.

With the cruise at an end the King and Wallis and most of their party moved to meet the Royal family assembled at Balmoral where they were also joined by friends Lord Louis and Lady Edwina Mountbatten. Afterwards relationships between the King and his government, the church and the Commonwealth soured with his insistence on marrying Wallis, whom the ruling class regarded as unsuitable to be Queen consort. This impasse led to the King’s abdication on 10 December 1936.

The King and Mrs Simpson are alleged to have had sympathies with the German Nazi regime and prior to ‘The Cruise of the Nahlin’ had met the German Ambassador to the Court of St James, Joachim von Ribbentrop. This meeting was followed by the delivery of a bouquet of 17 carnations. The significance of the number is unknown but similar bouquets were made regularly to Wallis from her diplomatic admirer. Some have speculated this was the number of times that the couple were intimate.

Out of harm’s way

In mid-1940 the then Duke and Duchess of Windsor were sent to the colonial outpost of the Bahamas, where the Duke was Governor-General for the duration of the war. On 1 August 1940 they departed Lisbon aboard the neutral American ship Excalibur which deviated from its normal course to New York to call at Bermuda where the Royal party disembarked on 9 August. They left Bermuda for Nassau in the steamer Lady Somers on 15 August and arrived two days later.

Frank Giles, the aide-de-camp to the Governor of Bermuda, was sent out in a launch to meet the Royal party and escort them to the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club where a Royal Guard and dignitaries were assembled to greet them. Later in his memoirs taken from notes written at the time he says:

‘She is a very clever woman…she is not intrinsically beautiful or handsome but she has a good complexion, regular features and a beautiful figure.

‘More than all the charm of her physical appearance, though, is her manner: she has, to an infinite degree, that really great gift of making you feel that you are the very person whom she has been waiting all her life to meet.

‘With old and young and clever and stupid alike she exercises this charm and during the week she was here, during which she met a number of people, I never saw anyone who could resist the spell – they were all delighted and intrigued.

‘She is never anything but stately, and when she had to wave to the crowds on her arrival, and subsequently whenever we drove through [Hamilton], she did it with ease and charm and grace which suggested that she had been at it all her life.

‘He is more in love with her than she is with him…the Duchess had a “watchful, almost maternal” devotion to her husband.’ The former king unwittingly confirmed Frank Giles’ assessment of the dynamic of the relationship when he returned from a shopping expedition in Hamilton with a new pair of swimming trunks. ‘It’s I who wear the shorts in this family, you know,’ he told the ADC.

The Bahamas

The Bahamas comprise 3000 islands and cays off the coast of Florida, with Government House situated on 10 acres of grounds in the capital Nassau. Both Edward and Wallis felt the post was beneath them and they were unhappy campers and did not care much for the local community. However, the Duke did considerable good in raising the wages of the majority of the islanders and improving their standard of living. The state of Government House did nothing to encourage the enthusiasm of the royal couple, it was infested with termites, and after a chunk of ceiling plaster fell into the drawing room narrowly missing the occupants, they decided to move out while the building was renovated. They first moved into a sprawling estate owned by Frederick Sigrist, a founder of the Hawker Siddeley Aircraft Company, who had vacated his Bahamas residence for the summer. When the Sigrists returned in mid-October they were obliged to find another temporary home, ‘Westbourne’, the country house of a Canadian gold miner, Sir Harry Oakes. They did not care for this accommodation declaring it a ‘shack by the sea’.

The rich came to Bahamas’ hideaway because it virtually had no income tax. Sir Harry Oakes, who was very rich, became one of the Duke’s golf playing buddies. In an incident that attracted world attention, on 8 July 1943 Sir Harry was bludgeoned to death in his home. His son-in-law was suspected of the crime, but despite assistance from Miami Police, it remains unresolved.

By Christmas they were back at Government House. Known as the ‘Windsor Team’ the immediate household included the Duke’s friends Major Gray Phillips (Private Secretary), Captain George Woods (aide-de-camp) and Captain Vyvyan Dore Drury (Public Relations). The most influential of this group was the 6 ft 6 in. bachelor Edwin Gray Moneylaws Phillips who was ten years the Duke’s senior. Educated at Eton and Oxford, and admitted to the Bar, he had served with the Black Watch during the Great War and was awarded the Military Cross.

It was Gray Phillips who conducted most vice regal business and advised the Duke on decisions. Captains Woods and Drury were accompanied by their wives. Vyvyan Drury was an Old Etonian, married to Nina, and was a born organiser.

George Woods was married to Rosa and with a property in the south of France they were neighbours of the Duke and Duchess. When the Duke and Duchess travelled from France through Spain to Portugal they were accompanied by the Woods. It is alleged that one of these close associates, most likely Major Phillips, was also working for Military Intelligence reporting on the Duke’s activities.

From Life magazine we learn that: ‘…the Duchess usually goes out with Mrs Vyvyan Drury and Mrs George Wood, the wives of two of the Duke’s three equerries, the third Major Gray Phillips is a bachelor. With Captains Drury or Woods or some guest the Duke usually plays a round of early afternoon golf on the Country Club course.

‘The Duchess was one of the best dressed women in the world and the Duke is also known for his sartorial elegance. The fashion-conscious Duchess favouring, but not exclusively, Mainbocher, this company originated in Paris but in 1940 moved its business to New York. It was rumoured the Duchess also maintained a link through diplomatic channels with the Paris based couturier Coco Chanel, who definitely batted on both sides of the warring parties. The Duke was able to maintain his wardrobe from the latest American fashions found in Miami and the Bahamas.’

Yet another yacht – the Southern Cross

In the far distant Bahamas the Duke and Duchess soon found new friends, in particular a wealthy Swedish entrepreneur Axel Wenner-Gren who had, amongst his many business interests, made a fortune by commercialising industrial vacuum cleaners which were then branded under the Electrolux label. He was also part owner of the armament manufacturer Bofors which traded with both Allied and Axis customers. According to intelligence sources Wenner-Gren was a friend of the prominent German figure and commander of the Luftwaffe Air Marshall Hermann Göring. While Göring’s wife was Swedish, Wenner-Gren had married an American.

Wenner-Gren owned the 1850-ton 320 feet (98 m) long Southern Cross, one of the world’s largest luxury steam yachts, which he had purchased from the American tycoon Howard Hughes. At 11.00 am on Sunday 3 September 1939 Britain and Germany were at war, and while the Royal Navy started blockading German ports, no immediate precautions were taken to protect British shipping. Just hours after war had been declared at 7.40 pm the Donaldson liner Athena on passage from Glasgow to Montreal carrying 1418 passengers and crew (including 311 Americans) was torpedoed and sunk. A number of ships in the area came to her aid including the Norwegian ship Knute Nelson and the yacht Southern Cross, assisted by the destroyers HM Ships Electra, Escort and Fame. As the ship sank slowly she was able to lower her lifeboats and limit the number of deaths to 117 passengers and crew. Remarkably Southern Cross recovered 376 survivors.

After settling in the Bahamas, and against the wishes of the British Secret Service, the Duke and Duchess boarded the Wenner-Gren Southern Cross to visit some outlying islands. Another reason was to visit Miami on 10 December 1940 seeking medical assistance for recurrent dental problems experienced by the Duchess. Life magazine again enlightens us saying that Dr. Horace L Carter extracted her painfully infected lower right molar, a 25-minute operation which involved scraping the jawbone. On 13 December the Duke was flown from Miami in a USN seaplane to meet with President Roosevelt who was holidaying in the Caribbean aboard the cruiser USS Tuscaloosa. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the recent agreement ‘Destroyers for Bases’ whereby the United States would supply Britain with 50 older destroyers in exchange for American access to British territories to establish forward bases, which included the Bahamas.

Despite the good work carried out by Southern Cross, British authorities later blacklisted the ship making it very difficult for her to obtain fuel and supplies. Accordingly, Southern Cross was gifted to the Mexican government for use as a naval training vessel. Just when this story could not get any spicier we find that Alex Wenner-Gren and John Fitzgerald Kennedy shared a friend, the Danish beauty Inga Arvard. She also moved in German society, attended Göring’s wedding and had met the Führer. She was friendly with JFK when he was serving as an Ensign in the Washington Office of Naval Intelligence. The young Kennedy was shortly moved to the Pacific and PT 109.

The Sun Sets

With the war in Europe all but over the Duke officially resigned from his position as Governor-General of the Bahamas. And as Time magazine tells it, on 30 April 1945 the Duke donned a dapper grey check suit, pinned a red carnation in his lapel, and with an elegantly dressed Duchess by his side went forth to meet the press and explain his second abdication. Not that there was much to explain: the Duke had asked to be released from his five-year term as governor which still had three months to run. A few days later the couple were in Miami on their way to New York and then London before returning to virtual exile in France.

Nahlin sails on

In 1937 the yacht was bought by King Carol II of Romania and renamed Luceafarul (Evening Star)and later Libertatea (Liberty). When the Romanian monarch abdicated in 1940 she was berthed at Galata on the Danube, first as a museum and later a floating restaurant. In 1999 the yacht was sent to England for restoration but this failed when the restorers went into receivership. In 2006 the yacht was purchased by another vacuum cleaner king Sir James Dyson who spent in excess of £25 million and five years in having her rebuilt in Germany with her engines replaced by later generation diesels. Lovingly restored, she was recommissioned in 2010 as Nahlin and registered at her old home port of Glasgow. During restoration the yacht’s original 21-foot mahogany-hulled tender was relocated in Scotland and reunited with her parent.

Summary

The records of would-be regal yachts reveal some interesting anecdotes. In Rosaura, Wallis Simpson first declares her love for the Prince of Wales. Clementine Churchill searched for dragons in her short escape from a domineering husband, falls in love, and checks upon progress of the construction of Singapore Dockyard. Australian soldiers guarding Italian POWs lose their lives when sunk by a mine off Tobruk.

And of Nahlin, an owner tragically dies by an assassin’s bullet while a future Australian Governor-General is unharmed. Finally, some small islands lying off the coast of Florida should be a secure hideaway for a member of the royal family with unusual views but here he finds new friends amongst armament makers and aircraft manufacturers.

The luxurious Nahlin reveals the extent of the rift between Crown and Government. Perhaps the finest summary of ‘The Cruise of the Nahlin’ comes from the British Ambassador to Greece, Sir Sydney Waterlow, who wrote:

‘This union, however queer and generally unsuitable and embarrassing for the State, may not in the long run turn out to be more in harmony with the spirit of the new age than anything that Britain could have contrived.’

In the end the Duke and Duchess were left with little purpose and alone, beloved by the chattering classes, but deserted by friends and family.

References:

Auspitz, Kate, Wallis: My War, Quartet Books, London, 2011.

Birmingham, Simon, Duchess: The Story of Wallis Warfield Windsor, Little Brown, Boston, 1981.

Bloch, Michael, The Duke of Windsor’s War, Hachette Digital, London, 1982.

Flanner, Janet, The Windsor Team, Life magazine, 9 January 1941.

H.R.H. the Duke of Windsor, Edward, A King’s Story: The Memoirs of H.R.H. the Duke of Windsor,Cassell & Company, London, 1951.

Larman, Alexander, The inside story of the love affairs that almost tore apart the royal family. Daily Telegraph, London, 27 June 2020.

Lavery, Brian, Royal Yachts Under Sail, Seaforth Publishing, Barnsley, 2022.

Trove, newspapers and magazines of these times.