I’m very glad that the World Cruise is avoiding the Suez Canal this year and instead will be travelling to the UK via Africa and not through the Red Sea, which again is in turmoil and uncertainty.
If it isn’t the threat to international shipping by pirates in the Red Sea, it’s now the threat of Mediterranean nations at each other's throats.
With this new conflict just beginning to spill out into the Gulf, my mind takes me back to the dawning of 1986.
The People's Revolution that would topple Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines was on the cusp, staff at a nuclear power plant in Chernobyl mishandled a safety test that would ensure that the city’s name would live on in infamy and the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh were preparing to join the Royal Yacht Britannia on a visit to New Zealand.
The turmoil of the 1980s oil crisis was being felt throughout the world and in Marxist Yemeni, on the coast of the Gulf of Aden – once a British colony – fighting had broken out over the rights of oil from Iraq.
Pinned down in a hotel in Aden at the mercy of the fighting factions, a group of British business men and diplomats sheltered fearful of escape, their situation dire.
Following a particularly heavy barrage of missile fire which destroyed the front parts of their hotel, the group sought the sanctuary of the lift wells in the middle of the building and for a week were subjected to the sound of mortar shells, rifle fire and agonising screams from those wounded outside.
Then via radio, word came in from the British Embassy some blocks away, that help was at hand. The HMS Britannia, currently sailing through the Red Sea (minus the Queen) was on her way to rescue them.
The news left them incredulous and disbelieving, but as a non-combatant Royal Navy ship, HMS Britannia would be able to enter the territorial waters without further inflaming the situation and on 17 January 1986, the Royal Yacht in all of her glory, covered in ceremonial flags and flying the British Ensign, dropped anchor at Khormaksar Beach to begin one of her most dangerous missions.
As dawn was breaking, the British Embassy’s single Land Rover conveyed the evacuees from the hotel wreckage to the beach through streets littered with the dead and wounded in a scene reminiscent of the apocalypse.
Once at the beach, the rebel fighters refused to release the evacuees until one of the Britannia’s crew bribed their release with Mars bars and biscuits pilfered from the Queen’s pantry.
The crew from the yacht’s tenders waiting just offshore, waded through neck-high water to meet and help the civilians to safety, all the time being watched from the sand dunes by the insurgents, who were eyeing the increasing number of local civilians fleeing with the British against the backdrop of the burning city.
Once filled to near capacity, with tarpaulins laid over the Queen’s expensive carpets and her drawing room full of grateful evacuees enjoying hot soup, courtesy of the royal kitchens, the yacht pulled up anchor and sailed to Djibouti on the Horn of Africa. Then safe in port, the refugees disembarked to the strains of 'Land of Hope and Glory,' played by the Royal Marine band on the yacht in a surreal atmosphere.
The Britannia was to return to Aden twice more over the next two days and even though heavy shelling fell close to the yacht as the rebel Marxist forces fought for position on the beach, her Commander persisted and would later earn the personal thanks from the Queen and the eternal gratitude of all those he saved.
After doing all that they could, the yacht left the area and continued on her voyage to NZ and into the waiting arms of the Duke of Edinburgh (who probably would have given his eye teeth to have been a part of the mission) and Her Majesty the Queen who reportedly was ‘delighted' that she could help.
Britannia, her officers and crew, had saved 1082 civilians across 55 nations in an act of quiet bravery that is being repeated by silent hero’s all across the Middle East today.
I am lucky enough to travel around the world again this year and my thoughts stray to those innocent families and children from those war torn regions, their lives torn apart by needless actions and reactions and wonder why in a world full of such wonder, we cannot all just get along. (ROSS THORBY)
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February 2024