Birthday/ Greeting Card featuring the Royal Yacht Britannia from a Marine Art Painting by Artist Malcolm Root
The Royal Yacht Britannia was built at the John Brown Shipyard on Clydebank and launched by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II on 16th April 1953, being commissioned on the 11th January.
The second ship of the name to act in Royal service, the ship went on to become an icon wherever she sailed and a great advertisement for British Royalty and industry. Her maiden voyage was to Malta, while she was used by the Queen to meet no less than four different U.S Presidents. At 412ft and with a speed of 21.5 knots the ship was to be seen all over the globe and performed her last duty in 1997 when she was used to ferry Sir Chris Patton away from Hong Kong after the British withdrawal from the area in 1997.
Retired by the new Labour government in December of the same year no replacement was forthcoming and several schemes to introduce a Royal vessel through private finances has come to nothing.
Britannia is happily preserved as a floating museum and corporate venue at Leith, Edinburgh, Scotland, with a number of rich and famous people having had functions on the ship
