Royal Navy’s global jubilee tribute for Queen
Sailors lined up on parade grounds and flight decks to celebrate Queen’s 70-year reign and this weekend’s jubilee celebrations.
1st June 2022 at 11:18am
Sailors from around the world have sent a traditional Royal Navy tribute to mark the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee.
On deployment in the Gulf, on patrol in the Atlantic, safeguarding home waters or undergoing training at bases in the UK, sailors have lined up on parade grounds and flight decks to celebrate the Queen’s 70-year reign ahead of this weekend’s jubilee celebrations.
And almost 2,000 members of the Armed Forces are set to make a major contribution to the celebrations.
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Britannia Royal Naval College in Dartmouth, the spiritual home of the Royal Navy’s officer cadre, has close personal and emotional ties with the Queen.
Her great grandfather Edward VII laid the foundation stone of the red-brick college on the hillside above the town and River Dart in 1902 before her father, the future George VI, passed out of Dartmouth having completed his training as a junior officer a decade later.
Even her two eldest sons passed out of the college in the 1970s and, even more recently, her grandson, the Duke of Cambridge, went through accelerated officer training at Dartmouth as he learned about the roles of all three Armed Forces.
Officer Cadets and the establishment’s full-time personnel produced a fitting tribute on the parade ground in front of the college.
On HMS Queen Elizabeth, 308 sailors, nearly half the ship’s company was marshalled on the flight deck off the south coast of England to produce a giant ‘E II R’ formation.
Royal Navy photographer, Leading Seaman Dan Rosenbaum spent an hour above the flagship in a Merlin helicopter, advising the ship hundreds of feet below on her movements to get the best shot.
As with the rest of the Royal Navy, 250 sailors on the flagship were presented with Platinum Jubilee medals – awarded to personnel with more than five years’ service.
Elsewhere, more than half the crew of HMS Lancaster – on patrol in the Atlantic – formed upon their much smaller flight deck for their tribute.
Her sister ship HMS Montrose joined in the celebrations while returning from a successful counter-drugs patrol in the Gulf of Oman.
And the parade grounds at HMS Sultan and Commando Training Centre Royal Marines provided space, respectively, for trainee engineers at the Navy’s School of Engineering in Gosport to spell out ’70’ and form two large propellers, and 105 trainee Royal Marines to create a large ’70’.