Graham Hall on Navigation
There was a constant programme of renewal. When I joined Trinity House, they had 10 ships. Due to economies of such, as always goes, that eventually has reduced to at the moment they’ve got three but every few years a new class of ship, you’d come in to replace one and we used to keep them for about 30 years, they didn’t get discarded.
The ‘Patricia’ that was one of ours, the old ‘Patricia’ which is still afloat in Stockholm, was built in about 1934 and when I was on her, in 1982, she was still going strong. We replaced her with the ‘Patricia’ that was built in ’84, was the ship they used to precede the Queen when she was on official business on ‘Britannia’.
When ‘Britannia’ was at sea with the Queen aboard, as part of the ceremonial, ‘Patricia’ used to precede ‘Britannia’ as the principal … as the elder brethren of Trinity House with the principal pilotage authority of the United Kingdom so they went in front of ‘Britannia’ to make sure she was safe and didn’t run in to any obligations, how it started but it was a ceremonial function in my day which we always used to do.