Royal Yacht Britannia

The Royal Yacht Britannia is berthed as a visitor attraction at the Ocean Terminal, Leith, Edinburgh.

Built by John Brown & Co. Ltd, Clydebank on the River Clyde, she was launched on 16th April 1953 by HM Queen Elizabeth and commissioned on 11th January 1954.

Traversing the globe over a period of 44 years and a distance of over 1 million nautical miles Britannia carried British Royalty to many countries on official state tours, holidays and honeymoons, before retiring from service on 11th December 1997.

Note that that during the month of January 2012 the visitor attraction is closed while maintenance is carried out in a nearby dry dock.

More information and details of how to visit the Royal Yacht Britannia can be seen on the official website.

Curiously, within 24 hours of this article originally being published, as work began to prepare the removal to dry dock the ship began listing around four degrees to starboard.

This happened when the mooring ropes were untied. New access doors to the pontoons were then below the waterline and leaking seals allowed flooding which further threatened the situation.

Due to limited resources on board the ship or on the nearby dock to pump ballast, Lothian and Borders Fire and Rescue Service were called and four units attended to provide assistance. Two units with high-volume pumps were called in as an emergency from Hawick, more than 50 miles away in the Scottish Borders.

The list was rectified and after a delay of 6 hours the process of moving to the dry dock was commenced.

These photographs were taken in June 2003 using a Sony S70 3MP PAS. Processed in Photoshop CS2

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