HALF WAY TO CAPE

Greymouth Evening Star, 10 February 1947, Page 5

HALF WAY TO CAPE

ROYAL FAMILY’S VOYAGE LONDON, February 9. The battleship Vanguard, carrying the Royal Family, is no more than half way to the Cape, reports Reuter’s correspondent on board. The Queen waved goodbye and the King from the top of a turret acknowledged farewell salutes when the escorting warships Implacable, St. Kitts, Cleopatra and Diadem left the Vanguard yesterday. Aeroplanes from the Implacable flew past in formation. The cruiser Nigeria, of the south Atlantic Squadron, is now the sole escort. The Princesses paid a surprise unofficial visit-to the midshipmen’s mess and stayed nearly an hour. The Royal Family visited the gunroom before dinner. The Vanguard was hove to m calm water 25 miles off the Gambia Estuary to enable the Royal Party to visit the carrier Implacable, which the Queen launched five years ago, reported Reuter’s correspondent yesterday. As the Vanguard steams towards South Africa, preparations are taking shape in all parts of the country to be visited by the Royal Family, says Reuter’s Cape Town correspondent. Pretoria, the union capital, will have four miles of streets decorated with red, white, and gold. Johannesburg, the largest and wealthiest city of the Union, will be illuminated in five colours for 10 days.