Netflix's The Crown depicted the late queen demanding the public pay for her luxury yacht, the Britania, but is any of it true?
Season five of The Crown has kicked off and fans will be looking forward to seeing how some of the controversial moments in the Royal Family's recent past will be represented on screen. One topic of conversation surrounding the new release focused on the late Queen Elizabeth and her love of boats.
In the show, when asked whether or not her holiday home in Balmoral was her favourite residence she fails to answer, prompting a cut scene to her yacht, the HMY Royal Britannia. Later she is depicted demanding John Major arrange a refurb - direct from the pockets of the British public.
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The cost of the refurb was an estimated £14.7m according to papers held by The Crown’s Prince Phillip, Jonathan Pryce. It also fell at a time the nation was facing a dire recession, but is any of the story true?
In 1994, it was announced the yacht would be decommissioned within the following three years. By the time 1997 came around, the Conservative party was desperate to be re-elected and vowed they would recommission the Britania as part of their government plans.
The Guardian reported the Queen was "furious" that the royal family was "dragged into the centre of the election campaign, just as it is fighting to restore its public image."
However, in a letter obtained back in 2018 from a senior Buckingham Palace official, Kenneth Scott, addressed to the Cabinet Office saying stated the Queen would love a new yacht. The letter said: "I have deliberately taken a back seat in recent correspondence, since the question of whether there should be a replacement yacht is very much one for the Government and since the last thing I would like to see is a newspaper headline saying “Queen Demands New Yacht’.
"At the same time I hope it is clear to all concerned that this reticence on the part of the palace now way implies that Her Majesty is not deeply interested in the subject; on the contrary, the Queen would naturally very much welcome it if a way could be found of making available for the nation in the 21st Century the kind of service which Britannia has provided for the last 43 years."
Despite her interest in luxury liners and favouritism towards the Britannia, there is no evidence stating the depiction of events in The Crown are true.
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