We spent two and a half days on Britannia, arriving in Manila just after lunch on Thursday 3 July. It was an extraordinary experience. Living in this elegant old ship is rather like spending a weekend in a very agreeable country house. Big cooked breakfasts, delicious Bloody Marys, cold lunches, Sancerre, fruitcake, dry martinis, good claret, excellent company. The Prince of Wales was a charming host, kind, courteous, amusing. He was particularly good with our girls, who sparkled. He spent some of the journey painting, and some reading poems by Rilke. He speaks enormous sense about the environment, for which he is frequently mocked. I fear that he will have the last laugh.
Unfortunately, the weather on the first day was pretty rough, which laid most of the family low for part of the time. I appeared to have good sea legs. Edward, who was with us and is the son of a naval officer, said it’s the result of a finely balanced middle ear, whatever that may mean. As the first morning wore on, so the ships of the Royal Navy’s task force, ‘Ocean Waves’, appeared all around us. There were 16 in all, the largest British fleet in these waters for years. At the end of an elaborate manoeuvre, we led the two-file convoy, then completed a half-circle to port and steamed up between the two columns, with the crews of each vessel drawn up on deck to cheer us as we passed through: the last time that a royal yacht will pass through the fleet. It was an extraordinary occasion – the Prince, Lavender and me on the royal deck at Britannia’s stern moving from port to starboard rail and back again to acknowledge the cheers of each vessel – Type 22 and 23 frigates, patrol ships, fleet auxiliaries, a nuclear submarine and the light aircraft carrier Illustrious. The Chinese intelligence ships which had followed us at a distance from Hong Kong must have been mystified by the amount of ‘face’ being given to the departed colonial Governor.
On the second day, with the sea mill pond calm under blue skies and fluffy clouds, there was a fly past as Illustrious pulled alongside and her complement of Sea Harriers tore off into the heavens. Later, the fleet’s helicopters and Sea Harriers joined together to salute us as the western sky turned pink, yellow and blood orange with the setting sun. I doubt whether a Governor and his wife have ever left before in such style: a pardonable way to bring down the curtain on Britain’s old Empire.
I’ll never forget my very first afternoon out of brave and decent Hong Kong, hanging over the prow of Britannia, watching the dolphins leaping alongside us through the waves, flying fish behind them by the dozen, skimming the water for a hundred yards or more. Dolphins and sunsets, that’s the real world now. Isn’t it?