The Queen’s funeral: The secret reason why Royal Navy sailors will pull the gun carriage explained

2022-10-15 09:13:28 By : Ms. Sherry Chen

The tradition of Royal Navy sailors pulling the monarch’s gun carriage at state funerals only began after an accident on the day of Queen Victoria’s final journey, some old newspapers reveal.

The Queen had been due to make her final journey uphill to Windsor Castle on that wintry day in February 1901 pulled by eight bay horses of the Royal Horse Artillery.

But when the horses took the weight of the coffin – which weighed 72 stone – part of the harness broke and one of them “received a blow and started to plunge”.

It was put about at the time that the last-minute change had been made because the horses were cold and likely to slip on the icy road from Windsor train station – perhaps to avoid a public discussion of the late Queen’s portly physique.

But the real story only emerges in a 1936 newspaper cutting from the time of King George V’s funeral, when Sir Cecil Levita, who had been in command of the cortege on that wintry February day in 1901, revealed what had happened.

“It was bitterly cold, with some snow, and the gun carriage had been kept waiting at Windsor station together with naval and military detachments for a considerable period,” he wrote in a letter to The Times after an article appeared to criticise the horses’ abilities.

“When the Royal coffin, weighing 9cwt, had been placed on the gun carriage, drums began muffled rolls which reverberated under the station roof and the cortege started.

“Actually, the eyelet hole broke. The point of the trace struck the wheeler with some violence inside the hock and naturally the horse plunged.”

“A very short time would have been required to improvise an attachment,” added. “However, the naval detachment promptly and gallantly seized the drag ropes and started off with the load.

“I may add that, a few days later, King Edward told me that no blame for the contretemps was attached to the RHA by reason of the faulty material that had been supplied to them.”

A Royal Horse Artillery Lieutenant named ML Goldie later backed up the story, but suggested the outcome was less than straightforward and the confusion was compounded by “all sorts of officious persons” who intervened and “pulled rank” that prevented him from retrieving the situation by forming an emergency action drill.

In an article published by the Naval Historical Society of Australia’s Naval Historical Review in 1981, it was claimed another soldier reported that a certain admiral was “in high glee at scoring over the pongos” – a slang term that the Royal Navy used for the Army.

Unofficial Royal Navy histories, however, claim the horses bolted and there was a risk the coffin would fall from the carriage. The sailors had been kept standing in the cold for 90 minutes while the artillerymen rode their horses in circles to keep warm.

One former Royal Naval historian is reported to have written: “The horses were led off and the sailors formed fours at the head of the cortege. Improvised drag ropes were brought in and so the great Queen went to rest.”

What happened next is also a source of debate between the forces. There were claims that the sailors made off with the gun carriage after Queen Victoria’s funeral, with a Captain Adlam stating that they refused to give it back.

While the story is likely to be a myth as three gun carriages used in various parts of the funeral were for some time held at the Tower of London, Edinburgh Castle and the Royal Hospital in Dublin, it hints at deeper inter-service rivalries over this most sacred part of the state funeral.

It was not helped in 1910 when the gun carriage was formally presented to the Royal Navy by King George V after the death of Edward VII, when he also gave medals to the 138 “bluejackets” from Whale Island in Portsmouth who pulled the gun at his father’s funeral.

A report in the London Evening Standard at that time said: “On leaving the garden of Buckingham Palace, the bluejackets marched back to Marlborough House to fetch their gun carriage, with a view to removing it to Whale Island.”

They left the house shortly after 3pm, dragging the gun carriage behind them before loading it on to a train at Victoria Station.

In 1936, after George V died, it was reported that Navy ratings at Whale Island were preparing the gun carriage to be rolled out again.

Since then, the carriage has borne King George VI as well as Winston Churchill and Earl Louis Mountbatten.

The sailors traditionally carry out their task at Royal funerals without overcoats as a sign of their toughness, with one report in 1936 saying that while they were “somewhat dwarfed by the height of the bearer party from the King’s Company of Grenadier Guards, their stalwart build prevented them looking small”.

One Royal Navy expert, Godfrey Dykes, noted some years ago that the uncoated sailors pulling Churchill’s gun carriage showed their “strength, resolve and grittiness” on the near freezing January day of his funeral in 1965 while the Army and the RAF were “snuggly dressed in their overcoats”.

At Whale Island this week, sailors were once again getting the gun carriage ready to carry Queen Elizabeth II.

“I go in weekly and turn the wheels a quarter turn to stop them from going egg-shaped with gravity and lots and lots of polishing,” Lieutenant Commander Paul “Ronnie” Barker, the gun carriage’s custodian said.

“In preparation for the Queen’s funeral, we have increased that polishing 10-fold. If you look at the gun carriage, the barrel itself hasn’t been chromed, that’s years and years of polishing and lots and lots of elbow grease.”

He added: “I will feel immensely proud on the day.

“It’s something that has been prepared for many, many years for this occasion and it’s a great honour to be part of the backroom crew, knowing the gun carriage is going to perform to the highest standard along with the sailors who are going to pull the Queen on her final journey.”

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