It started with the best of intentions. The proposed national flagship was to be the “jewel in the crown” of the government's new shipbuilding strategy, said defence secretary and shipbuilding tsar Ben Wallace in July2021. It was not, as some of the press called it, a new “royal yacht” and replacement for HMY Britannia, now docked in Edinburgh as a tourist attraction. Its primary function would be to boost trade and drive investment into the British economy by hosting exhibitions and trade fairs. It would also be a diplomatic tool, voyaging around the world to entertain and accommodate dignitaries and heads of state as a floating embassy. Moreover, the ship would be built in the UK by British artisans, showcasing their skills and expertise with leading-edge technology, to be, as Wallace pronounced, “the greenest ship of its kind”.
Royal Yacht Squadron member Ian Maiden had been advocating for this long before prime minister Boris Johnson first announced the programme on 30 May 2021. The lifelong sailor and successful businessman has been passionate about it since the Royal Yacht Britannia was decommissioned in 1997, and even went as far as commissioning the late, great yacht designer Jon Bannenberg to draw a concept to succeed it, but he has always and purposely avoided the nomenclature “royal yacht”. He was struck by the fact that £3 billion in UK trade deals were signed off on board Britannia in her last three years of service. “That was a very significant thing because the yacht was never intended as a sales platform. And it occurred to me at the time that because we're a maritime nation, it seemed sensible to have a custom-built ship for trade promotion” says the fiercely patriotic Maiden. “There's a tendency in Britain not to be proud of ourselves, and we should be proud of our achievements.”
Maiden was perhaps the driving force behind the competition. “I was the first one that got Boris Johnson to take it up. I kept on pestering him,” he says. Maiden had used the term “national flagship” and the build estimate of £200 million to £25o million in his letters to the prime minister before Johnson announced a vessel of the same name, which was later given a budget of the same amount. Coincidence? He doesn't think so.
He is quick to point out that the flagship would have a cachet for diplomatic meetings and trade fairs that far eclipses any five-star hotel, putting it in an excellent position to harvest the demand for British exports from fast-growing Commonwealth economies. “For example, India has a vast new middle class that is almost as big as the whole of the British population… I could see the ship in Mumbai, the Band of the Royal Marines, floodlights, red carpet and the president of India on board, followed by a sea day. That degree of commercial impact is
