Escort Up Harbour

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31043, 26 April 1966, Page 3

Escort Up Harbour

As haze rolled away from Lyttelton Harbour on Saturday morning, the Royal yacht Britannia, pristine in royalblue paint and white upperworks, moved up the harbour attended by nearly 40 small craft. She was preceded through the moles by the two Royal New Zealand Navy motorlaunches, Pegasus and Haku. The Britannia had been met by the Lyttelton Harbour Board’s pilot boat Wairangi, and the harbourmaster (Captain A. R. Champion) boarded her to pilot her up the harbour. All vessels in port were dressed, and as the Britannia came alongside she broke out lines of bunting. Shortly before 9 a.m. crowds had started to arrive in Lyttelton; and many cars stopped on Evans Pass road to watch the Britannia come up the harbour. After the Britannia berthed at No. 4 East wharf, the space between that wharf and the adjacent one quickly became

jammed with small craft, and as the time for the Queen Mother’s departure for Christchurch drew nearer many of the younger persons on the yachts climbed the masts to obtain a better view. Soon after the vessel tied up, the Queen Mother, wearing a dress and coat in two shades of jade shantung, and a hat of tulle and feathers, came to the rail and waved to the cheering crowd, which lined adjacent wharfs and the breastwork up to five and six deep. About 10.40 a.m. the Queen Mother came down the redcarpeted gangway on to a dais on the wharf. There she met the chairman of the Lyttelton Harbour Board (Mr L. G. Amos) and Mrs Amos, the secretarymanager of the board (Mr A. J. Sowden), the Mayor of Lyttelton (Mr J. B. CoUett) and Mrs Collett, and the Town Clerk of Lyttelton (Mr J. F. Thompson). The Queen Mother then left for Christchurch.