Pride as vessels made shipshape for royal River Pageant honour

The eyes of the world will be on the 1,000 strong flotilla taking up their positions on the river for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee River Pageant on Sunday – among them three boats flying the flag for Yorkshire and the Humber.

The restored ex-Whitby lifeboat William Riley will join the event on the Thames, along with Whitby-registered sailing coble Gratitude and the Humber sloop Spider T.

Spider T, the last remaining Humber “super sloop”, which has been painstakingly restored back to the condition she was in the Edwardian era when she was built, set out for London from Keadby Lock on the River Trent on Saturday morning.

She will pass East Anglia before eventually setting off down the Thames estuary and berthing at West India Dock.

The vessel was bought by Mal Nicholson in 1994 in a derelict state, but now has everything from an Edwardian rolltop bath in a bathroom with a marble floor to a fancy spiral staircase.

As well as securing permission to fly a special flag, the vessel, now part of the National Historic Fleet, has been repainted, had her sails checked and has had work on her 60ft mast to enable her to get under the 14 Thames bridges.

Mr Nicholson said: “A lot of hard work has gone on to make it fit for the job of representing the county (of Lincolnshire). We have special livery for the occasion and she looks absolutely stunning.”

More than 200 people vied for the chance of being on board during the pageant, alongside guests including the Lord Lieutenant of Lincolnshire, Tony Worth.

Mr Nicholson knows they will be under the closest scrutiny: “There is going to be everything from helicopters, other vessels with the Press, from the banks, from the bridges. Every last movement is going to be captured by the media.”

A floating tower with eight specially-cast bells, which will be rung along the seven-mile route, will head the procession, followed by the hand-built 88ft Royal Rowbarge Gloriana, and other traditional “manpowered” boats including watermen’s cutters, gigs and skiffs and a section carrying the flags of Commonwealth nations.

The Queen and Duke of Edinburgh will follow in their magnificent gilded barge.

Gratitude, a sailing coble built in 1976 and intended as a floating museum piece designed to preserve the tradition of Yorkshire cobles, will also take part.

She will set out tomorrow from Scarborough and represent North Yorkshire. Andrew Pindar, Deputy Lieutenant of North Yorkshire, will be on board alongside Lord Lieutenant Lord Crathorne.

“I did the rehearsal and even when there were 100 boats let alone 1000, it is a real bun fight,” Mr Pindar said. “It is a massive undertaking. It is the enormity of it – 1,000 vessels and 30,000 people on board and every type of boat, from sailing boats to Dunkirk Little Ships – to us, a sailing coble from North Yorkshire, which is fabulous.”

Among the flotilla, towards the lead, in the manpowered section, will be the 103-year-old William Riley, which is owned by the Whitby Historic Lifeboat Trust and will be crewed by local rowers and volunteer fund-raisers.

The challenge, coxswain Pete Thomson says, will be to maintain exactly four knots and its position, as falling behind would wreck the formation.

He said: “The pageant is the biggest thing we have done yet and we are extremely proud to have the chance to do it. For me to be the coxswain of a rowing lifeboat, as it was 100 years ago, is a huge privilege.”