Welcome aboard ! |
Do you ever remember a movie called The Yellow Rolls-Royce? One of those beautiful Hollywood comedy-dramas’s belonging to a different age. The movie told the story of 3 glamorous owners of the aforementioned classic car, their unconnected adventures linked through their ownership of the vehicle.
The reason for this preamble is that in 1989, I had the good fortune to spend a few months working on a little ship, a ship who’s own true story mimics that of the famous Rolls, but on a far grander scale. The story spans 5 decades, drifts all across the globe and has a cast of thousands….. This site is the story of the Queen of the Isles.
Time marches on and many things have happened since I started this site. A few of the key developments are annotated below and in the footnote. Enjoy your time in the company of the Queen!
Welcome aboard the Queen of the Isles, or more precisely, my attempt at a website to chart her tale. The story is a long and fascinating one that stretches across the world, and the idea came from having spent a memorable few months cruising the Barrier Reef as crew on the Queen back in the late 80’s. The idea became a thought and after a few years of very absently collecting ‘odds and sods’ of memorabilia, the thought became a little project.
The idea of putting all this in a website developed over the last year or so, both as a method of displaying the story and the pictures but also to see if I could do it, never having done such a thing before.
The ‘thread’ if you will, came from a vague and foggy recollection of the Hollywood story of a car with different owners, their stories connected by sequential ownership. This was The Yellow Rolls-Royce.
A yellow Phantom II Rolls-Royce is the setting for three otherwise unconnected tales of romance and adventure. The first owner is a British diplomat whose wife uses the back seat of the Rolls to conduct an affair with one of his underlings. The car is then used in the 1930s by a gangster's moll who falls in love with a photographer. Finally, an American woman uses the car to unwittingly smuggle a political activist across the Yugoslavian border during World War II.
It was an all-star ensemble piece written by Terence Rattigan and directed by Anthony Asquith featuring a ‘who’s who’ of Hollywood, including Ingrid Bergman, Rex Harrison, Shirley MacLaine, Jeanne Moreau, George C Scott and Omar Sharif. Even those British stalwarts Joyce Grenfell and Lance Percival pop up with appearances. Once of those classic ‘rainy Sunday’ movies!
I got to thinking that the Queen, with 4 decades of service and 6 different identities must have entertained literally thousands of people over its life and had many an adventure. Maybe not quite World War II but certainly a few affairs and probably the odd gangster or two. Mostly just ordinary lives of holiday makers, travelers and crew members, each with their own story, who’s paths crossed on the decks of the Queen of the Isles.
Our story begins in the early 1960’s, when the Beatles were still loveable mop-tops who hadn’t discovered mind altering drugs. The Queen of the Isles was launched in 1964 (ironically the same year as the Yellow Rolls-Royce was made) and plied her early trade on the UK waters, cruising between Penzance and the Isles of Scilly. This was a short lived career and the young Queen was shuffled through various short charter assignments, too big or too small, too posh or too poor to really settle in any of them.
By 1970, while the Fab Four were now wearing Afghan coats, minds warped from a little too much time in India and about to stop being Fab or indeed Four; the Queen was nobody’s child living a nomadic existence from charter to charter around the west coast of the UK. From this seemingly aimless existence, a saviour would appear in the form of the British Government. Depending on which account you read, the Queen was either donated to; or purchased by the Government of Tonga, either a gift or a subsidy from Harold Wilson or Ted Heath (OK, underlings thereof), depending on when the deal was actually done. So on November 27th 1970, the Queen of the Isles cleared Penzance for the last time, like some member of a nautical witness protection programme, bound for a new name, a new career and some sun on her decks in the Friendly Isles of Tonga!
Through the decade, as Glam gave way to Punk, Maca had Wings, while John had Yoko and Instant Karma. George was mixing Hare Krishna in with She’s So Fine and Ringo was doing whatever Ringo did. The Queen had a shiny new name plate and the adopted title, Olovaha.
In many ways, this was the summer of the Queen’s career and for over 10 years she cruised the Tongan Islands delivering passengers, cargo and livestock around the group. It is pretty tough to find out exactly how it was all going through this period but she must have made something of an impact as the Olovaha was featured on a Tongan postage stamp! Oh, and it appears she sank once…..
Since my limited knowledge of the Tonga experience in the early days of this site; a lot of new information has come to light. The sinking in 1977 was something of a national event and I have been lucky enough to get a few personal accounts of the story. For more, read Tales from Tonga.
More exciting still was Olovaha's part in the invasion of the Republic of Minerva! One of the worlds' few attempts at starting a brand new country! Part fact, part fantasy, part farce; this is a piece of world history in which the Queen (appearing as Olovaha) co stared. See Olovaha & the Invasion of the Republic of Minerva.
It was the early 80’s now and Paul was singing with a slowly mutating Michael Jackson, George was on the way to being a Wilbury, Ringo was Ringo and John was shot dead on a New York pavement. The Queen of the Isles, or rather Olovaha these days, was on her way to another career change! This time the shores of New Zealand beckoned and quite a different role was to be played. The Queen dropped her short cruise and cargo persona for a glamorous refit and the job of cruise ship cum floating Casino! Strict New Zealand gambling laws offered an opportunity for the newly named Gulf Explorer to carry card playing Kiwi’s off to international waters for a bet or two.
Sadly, despite its early promise, the roulette wheel of life came up red while the Queen/Gulf Explorer had her fortune firmly placed on black. On or about 2nd or 3rd August 1986 she was arrested with large debts and laid up in Tauranga with a writ on her mast. Time now became a factor as a new road bridge was being constructed at Tauranga and if completed; its height imprisoned the Queen there for ever! In 1987, shortly before the bridge was finished, the Queen was freed from her prison and sold to an Australian company for a song.
So now it was pushing towards the end of the 80’s, the airwaves were filled with Bros and Rick Astley while Wham! requested a wake up call before somebody Go Go’d. The Queen slipped off her evening Casino wear and donned beach clothes and sunnies for a new career cuising the Great Barrier Reef. Returned to her original name, the Queen of the Isles was now in her element despite her advancing years.
In 1989, a young English back packer stumbled on to her decks, namely me. This was a great time to be involved as happy, sun burned and occasional drunken passengers were entertained by equally happy, sun burned and occasional drunken crew. Cruising through the paradise Islands of the Barrier Reef on the weekly return journey to Cape York and Thursday Island; stopping for beach BBQ’s along the way, enjoying a champagne sunrise at Australia’s northern tip. It was a fantastic time to be alive and working on the Queen of the Isles!
But as throughout the Queen’s chequered career, the storm clouds were building. The tourist business is seasonal and FNQ is brutally hot in the summer, a protracted airline strike limited travel from the big cites, and ultimately the Queen wasn’t cheap to fuel or run….. Finally, all this lead to financial difficulties and an ill-conceived plot to sink the Queen!
Fortunately she was spared that ignominy but another change of ownership took place and possibly she became the Island Princess. I say ‘possibly’ in that I found a few references to this entity but nothing concrete, suffice to say it was a relatively short tenure.
So as the 80’s hip-hopped towards the 90’s, George was still a Wilbury and bizarrely cameo-ing in Life of Brian, Paul was putting on his brave face, Ringo achieved true credibility as the voice of Mr Conductor in Thomas the Tank Engine and John, although quite dead, was selling more records than ever! There is a kind of anonymous phase here until the early 90’s where the Queen, possibly as Island Princess was assumed to be working the region although details are a little sketchy, finishing her Australian innings laid up as so many times before.
In 1993, as Whitney warbled that she would always love you and Lenny Kravitz questioned whether or not you were going to go his way, the Queen or Princess as she may then have been, was sold to Western Developement Corp.in the Solomon Islands, assumed for not a lot of dollars. So some time that year, she set sail for what may have been her final home.
Renamed the Western Queen, the aging lady served in the Solomon’s for 4 years until March 1997 when cyclone Justin ripped through the Coral Sea with winds in excess of 150km/h, reeking devastation on ships and Islands alike. And at the time when Oasis instructed us not to look back in anger, somewhere towards the middle of the month, the Western Queen was dragged onto a reef and holed in the teeth of the cyclone.
So here we are as 2006 slides slowly into 2007, Macca is locked in the mother of divorce cases, both George and John RIP and Ringo does…. I sit at the computer and the Queen lies on a beach in Honiara, 43 years young, picked to the bones and at the mercy of the sun and the rain, never to set to sea again? Finished with Engines, I think is the true nautical phrase.
So does this most interesting and turbulent of journeys finish there? Most probably yes, but it would be nice to think that it didn't. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to imagine that one day the old lady could be coaxed from her riposte and laid finally to rest in the open ocean amongst her other, more esteemed Military cousins in Guadalcanal? I little piece of old England, Tonga, New Zealand and Australia amongst the naval might of Japan and America, resting in peace on the sea bed in Iron Bottom Sound. Left as nothing but a home for fish and a source of pleasure for intrepid scuba divers.
For all those at Charles Hill and Sons who designed and built her in ‘63 and ‘64; for the charter passengers and crew from Penzance and the Scillies, from Liverpool, Ireland and Wales in the 60's; for the 10 years of passengers and crew in 1970's Tonga; for Auckland’s' gamblers and my protégés on the reef in the 80's and finally those in the Solomon's at the end. For all those people, who’s numbers must run into the thousands, for all those people with their own problems, passions and glories who brushed by the Queen on the way to the rest of their lives……
It’d be nice to think the story of the Queen of the Isles wasn’t quite over!
Andy Newland
Stevenage, UK
December 2006
For Lara Joy, my conscience, my inspiration, my guide
Nearly 5 years has passed since I launched my website, the aim is still the same. Collect information on a colourful story and record the memories of those who shared the experience. For these contributions and email/guest book messages, I'm enormously grateful. Things move slowly but they still move and most months something or another pops up. The 'Minerva' saga was a classic example of a fascinating adventure about which I previously knew nothing at all!
I still believe the story of the Queen of the Isles is an interesting one that deserves to be told. Personally, I think there's at least a book or maybe even a movie in it!
Many things have changed for me too. I relocated from UK to Malaysia and married a beautiful Malaysian lady. Luckily I'm still able to maintain this site even though the servers are housed in Europe.
On a final (for now) and sad note, sometime towards the end of 2010 the Western Queen was cut off at the water line in Honiara, and is no more. From Goggle Earth you can still see the hull shape so her footprint still exists as do the memories of those who sailed on her. See Western Queen pictures
The Queen is dead, long live the Queen!
Good luck to you all!
Andy Newland
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
April 2011
