On December 11, 1997, Queen Elizabeth II shed the only public tear of her reign when she witnessed the disarmament of a ship dear to her heart.
Seeing Queen Elizabeth II cry was rare. Very rare. Almost utopian. Naturally marble, the most powerful monarch on the planet did not shed a single tear either at the funeral of Princess Diana in 1997 or at the weddings of her grandsons, Princes William and Harry, nor even at the funeral of her husband, Prince Philip. In reality, Queen Elizabeth II, who died on September 8, 2022, was only publicly overwhelmed by her emotions once during her reign. It was in 1997.
On December 11 this year, the Queen and her husband travel to Portsmouth, in the south of the United Kingdom, to attend the decommissioning of Britannia, a boat with a length of 127 meters that can accommodate 200 passengers in addition to the 290 crew members. A sumptuous royal yacht, it had been baptized 44 years earlier, in March 1953, by the Queen who, with her husband Prince Philip, had supervised its fitting out and decoration. On board the Britannia, the royal couple made nearly 1,000 official trips around the world.
It is therefore quite naturally that Elizabeth II let herself be overcome by emotion when she witnessed her disarmament. Some specialists of the British royal family believe that the Queen lived, this December 11, 1997, one of the saddest days of her life. This public tear remains, in any case, the only one of his reign.
A boat that cost too much and became a museum
It was the British government that decided in 1994 to disarm the Britannia, considering that it was costing the taxpayers too much money. Since turned into a museum, the magnificent ship is placed in the Port of Leith in Edinburgh, Scotland, where it has become one of the most visited places in Britain.