Royal Transport. Peter Pigott

      Detail of photo from page 101.

      When I told my aunt that a title I was considering for this book was One’s Royal Transport (said with an upper-class British accent), she warned me not to be facetious about the royal family. At the age of eighty-five, she had grown up in Imperial India, and the trappings of majesty, whether car, ship, or train, were traditional, reassuring, and immutable.

      In the years I was posted to the Canadian Embassy in The Hague, members of the Dutch royal family famously got around by bicycle. There is a (probably apocryphal) story of the Queen of Sweden, who, because she travels without pomp and circumstance, carries in her handbag, in case of accident, a card that reads: “I am the Queen of Sweden.” But this pared-down approach that European (i.e. continental) monarchies take in the twenty-first century is not for the House of Windsor — at least not yet. No longer able to send those who disagree with them to the Tower or claim distant countries as Crown colonies, when it comes to what they ride in and how, this royal family can still give us a lesson in majesty. Each year they carry out about 2,900 official engagements in the United Kingdom and overseas. These involve a significant amount of travel that has to be undertaken in a way that meets presentational, efficiency, and security requirements. The family has successfully accomplished this since the steam engine was invented, and that is what this book is about.

      In pre-railway, pre-steamship days, royalty rarely went far from the palace. Contrary to what we see in movies, Queen Elizabeth I did not attend the Globe theatre to enjoy Shakespeare’s plays — spectacle was brought to the palace. To leave it meant moving the entire royal household, which was a major undertaking and rarely done. Although when taken the royal progress lived off the local nobility for food, shelter, and entertainment — in effect bankrupting them and thus ensuring their loyalty — it still entailed a large number of horses and carriages for courtiers and their baggage. Even in the early years of Victoria’s reign, the monarchy was never popular and had to be escorted by troops, on foot and mounted, to provide security as well as pageantry. As for travel away from Britain, whether by land or sea, it was wholly unsafe and uncomfortable, and no dynasty was about to risk its sovereign or the presumptive heir to the throne on a foreign tour.

      The first member of the royal family to come to Canada was Prince William Henry, Duke of Clarence, the third son of King George III. Serving in the Royal Navy, he arrived in Halifax in 1786 and behaved much as any seafaring officer of the period did — brawling publicly, drinking to excess, and visiting brothels on Halifax’s Water Street. His younger brother Prince Edward Augustus, the Duke of Kent, was hardly an improvement. Banished to Canada in 1791 because he flogged his soldiers incessantly (even for those times), he brought with him his mistress, Alphonsine Thérèse Bernadine Julie de Montgenet. But while in command of the Halifax garrison, His Royal Highness had its fortifications rebuilt and, in thanks, the locals changed the name of Île St. Jean to Prince Edward Island. The Prince returned to Britain in 1800 and nineteen years later fathered the future Queen Victoria.

      Her Majesty did not cross the ocean to Canada, disliking travel and barely tolerating the new technology of trains and steamships. But her son Albert Edward, the Prince of Wales, changed it all: he toured Canada in 1860, not on a posting but because he saw his role as “Britain’s first salesman.” On tour, he opened bridges, shook the hands of selected Canadians, reviewed regiments, and postulated his government’s views of the current scene. In doing so, His Royal Highness had discovered a role for royalty and set the pattern for all future tours, each monarch utilizing the new technology of the railway, motor cars, and aircraft to do so.

      There have been many royal biographies. Other books have painted pictures of the personalities themselves, but on researching the transport of each successive generation, with the idea that objects can speak louder than the people themselves, I was able to understand better the monarch that favoured them. Queen Victoria kept two hundred horses at the Royal Mews, a hundred more at Windsor and Balmoral, and never really accepted trains. With the enthusiasm with which he took to everything, her son Edward VII embraced all forms of transport, even meeting with the Wright brothers. He also favoured the Daimler, a make of motor car that the royal family would use for half a century. His son George V so loved the racing yacht Britannia that he ordered it scuttled when he died. Edward VIII — the only royal matinee idol until Princess Diana — loved jazzy American cars and was the first member of the family to fly. His brother George VI’s choice of transport was less bold, but his consort Queen Elizabeth, the future Queen Mother, was more adventurous, keen for anything from jet airliners to helicopters to a golf cart. Denied a naval career, Prince Philip took to aircraft. Denied a role at all, Prince Charles has always loved James Bond’s Aston Martins, while his mother the Queen is reportedly never so happy as when driving herself around in a Land Rover.

      There is no question that the royal family are privileged, that their only qualification for living in the royal palaces in London and Windsor and for enjoying the executive jet aircraft and Rolls-Royces is that they were born into the House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, renamed Windsor.¹ Even years after his abdication, the Duke of Windsor still expected royal privilege, part of an enchanted world he had always known. “Trains were held, yachts materialized, aeroplanes stood waiting,” explained Wallis Simpson. When that no longer happened, “It was pathetic to see HRH’s face. He couldn’t believe it,” remembers the Duke’s best friend, Major Edward “Fruity” Metcalfe, who accompanied him on many Royal Tours. “He’d been so used to having everything done as he wished.”

      But it should be remembered that, like the Crown jewels and the Gold Coach, the planes, trains, and limousines are only held by Her Majesty the Queen as sovereign. She cannot sell them, and they must be handed on to her successor. She does have a driving licence and operates her own Daimler Jaguar saloon and a Vauxhall estate (station wagon). The Duke of Edinburgh has a Range Rover and a Metrocab to get through London’s traffic. All of these vehicles are expensive but hardly in the super-rich category. And when it was in service, the idea of using the Royal Yacht Britannia for a pleasure cruise was always out of the question. Her Majesty has always been a poor sailor; as a princess on her 1947 South African tour, when HMS Vanguard hit rough weather, she wrote, “I for one would have willingly died.” And as for hopping about in helicopters, Her Majesty’s childhood dream was “being