Their Royal Highnesses Arrive

Auckland Star, Volume LVIII, Issue 44, 22 February 1927, Page 6

Their Royal Highnesses Arrive

A REAL WAITEMATA WELCOME White Wings and Launches Flutter Round The Great Grey Ship. SUN BREAKS OUT AS SHE DROPS ANCHOR

For once our vaunted February weather played us false. We had pictured the Renown with our Royal guests on board steaming majestically in from the Gulf over sunlit waters so characteristic of our New Zealand summer, and coming to anchor on the sparkling Waitemata, which must have been christened at this time of the year "Shining Waters." Nature toned herself to the big grey battleship. Skies were grey (and weeping), the sea was grey, and as the Renown drew to her anchorage off the wharves, she was completely blotted out in a blinding squall from the south-west. But it was only passing. At nine o'clock precisely the anchor went over, "hoarse o'er the side the rustling cable rings," and at the same moment gay flags broke out from stem to truck of the tall main-mast, and down to the stern, the launches and white-sailed yachts clustered round, and a gleam of sunlight lit up a scene characteristic of the Waitemata when it welcomes distinguished visitors. Nothing could have been more typical of the warm welcome waiting the guests on shore than the crowds of yachts and launches weaving backwards and forwards and round the monster battleship, which seemed to fill the channel where she swung afc anchor.