On a most British of days - right down to the weather - more than a million people line the Thames to pay tribute to the Queen on her Diamond Jubilee.
Has there ever been a more robust, a more determined or a more downright stubborn display of support for the Queen?
On a day when the weather could not have been more cruel, more than a million people turned out regardless to line the Thames and give the Sovereign the biggest, albeit the soggiest, party of her 60-year reign.
To repay them for their loyalty, the Queen smiled on through the cold and wet, resisting the joint temptations of an indoor berth and a hot cup of tea to wave non-stop from the windswept deck of the royal barge from start to finish of the Thames Diamond Jubilee Pageant.
Try explaining to the rest of the world why dozens camped overnight in pouring rain and bone-chilling cold for a passing glimpse of a tiny 86-year-old woman in the distance and it may be difficult finding where to start.
But no one knows better than the Queen that, for people who stood 20 deep in places on the river bank, the chance to say they saw her on her Diamond Jubilee weekend was what the day was all about.
“It was absolutely worth waiting for,” said a shivering Joanne Revitt, 48, who watched the procession from the Embankment near the tower of Big Ben (or the Queen Elizabeth Tower, as MPs want to rename it).
“The Queen looked stunning and I am quite convinced she waved at me as she went past,” she added.
Countless thousands of others no doubt went home with the same belief, and they would have gone home happy as a result.
It was, the Duke of Cambridge told one guest, a “very emotional” day for his grandmother and at times it showed as she seemed slightly overwhelmed by the scale of the public’s response.
An estimated 1.2 million people, a bigger turnout than for last year’s royal wedding, lined 14 miles of riverbank, turning it into an unbroken chain of red, white and blue.
For the artists on the Millennium Bridge who had been invited to paint the 21st century’s “Canaletto Moment”, however, the colour palette was overwhelmingly grey.
No one would have blamed the Queen if she had turned out in oilskins, but instead she wowed the crowds in an ivory coloured bouclé dress and coat, braided with silk ribbon and with a silk organza frill, which included a clever nod to her three big jubilees.
Made by the Queen’s dresser Angela Kelly, it was embroidered with gold and silver spots and embellished with crystals to represent diamonds. Was it coincidence that it seemed to borrow from the Ditchley portrait of Elizabeth I wearing a similarly opulent spotted dress?
For a woman who once said “I have to be seen to be believed”, chance seemed unlikely to have played a part in the Queen’s choice of attire.
The day had begun with six million people around the country attending 10,000 street parties from Devon to
Dumfriesshire, almost all of which had gone ahead despite the weather. The one notable exception was Downing Street, where David and Samantha Cameron decided to move their party indoors to escape a drenching.
The motto of the Queen’s first prime minister, Sir Winston Churchill, “keep buggering on”, seemed to have been lost on them.
At 2.10pm, as the trifles and chocolate fingers were being polished off around the country (triggering a mass retreat to the comfort of a dry sofa and a television set), the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh made their entrance. Waiting for them at Chelsea Pier were the Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall, together with an honour guard of 22 Chelsea Pensioners.
Over her wrist, the Queen had brought what at first glance appeared to be a small towel (which would have been sensible enough) but later proved to be a shawl — her only concession to the drizzle — which she reluctantly deployed an hour later when even her stoicism began to be tested.
The tender from the royal yacht Britannia took her downstream to the royal barge, Spirit of Chartwell, a Thames pleasure cruiser that had been transformed into a handsome ship of state with gilded carvings, Royal Watermen in scarlet ceremonial dress and a royal coat of arms made from half a million gold buttons.
Already on board were the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Harry, the only other members of the Royal family given the honour of travelling with the Queen, who wants her Jubilee to focus on the direct line of succession.
“Spectacular!” the Queen told the Duke of Edinburgh as she surveyed the scene. “So nice, so impressive.”
The Duchess of Cambridge, the hardiest soul aboard, needed no protection from the elements other than a vermilion knee-length dress by Alexander McQueen and a hat from James
Lock designed by Sylvia Fletcher, accessorised with brooch of two silver dolphins, a gift from the Royal Navy Submarine Service.
She had also brought with her a scarf in the new Strathearn tartan, created after the Royal wedding, when the Duke and Duchess were also given the titles of Earl and Countess of Strathearn.
As they greeted crowds waiting at the waterside, the Duke said the support was “fantastic” and “wonderful”, adding: “Lots of people turned out today!” The organisers of the 1,000-boat flotilla had insisted it would be “the biggest single live event in the history of the world”, and while historians may squabble over that, no one who was on the banks of the Thames today is likely to live to see anything quite like it again.
Under the glass canopy of the royal barge (where she refused to sit on a purpose-built “throne”, perhaps fearing hypothermia would set in if she stayed still), the Queen beamed with delight as she greeted the cheering crowds and watched the biggest event staged on the Thames for 350 years.
“Just look at this!” the Duchess of Cornwall said to the Queen. “Incredible!” “So exciting!” the Duchess of Cambridge said to her husband.
The scale of the event’s ambition was signalled by the first vessel in the flotilla: a 180ft floating belfry weighing 12 tons whose eight specially cast bells pealed non-stop for the hour and a half it took to reach Tower Bridge, echoed by returning peals from every church and cathedral it passed.
Immediately behind was the newest boat in the Pageant; the gilded and magnificent royal rowbarge, Gloriana, which gave spectators a flavour of a previous Elizabethan age as its 18 oarsmen, led by the multiple Olympic gold medal winner Sir Steve Redgrave, powered the 94ft vessel downstream.
It was the first time the Queen had seen her Jubilee gift in action.
The £1 million Gloriana, one of the true stars of the show, had been specially commissioned for the event and was presented to the sovereign earlier in the year.
As they approached the royal barge, Garrison Sergeant Major (WO1) Bill Mott, who is reputed to possess the most powerful voice in the British Army, called Gloriana to order by barking at its crew to “toss oars” in salute to Her Majesty, before leading three cheers for the Queen.
Once all 260 man-powered boats had gone by, it was finally time for the Queen to join the procession, as Spirit of Chartwell slipped her moorings and fell in at the head of the powered vessels.
The Queen’s cousin, Margaret Rhodes, had claimed the monarch “slightly dreaded” the flotilla, perhaps following a bumpy trip upriver during her Silver Jubilee, and sick bags were reportedly on board just in case.
But eight miles downstream, the organisers had deployed their secret weapon.
At 9.30 in the morning they had closed the Thames Flood Barrier for the entire day to slow the river from its usual 5mph current to just a tenth of that speed and calm the tidal surge that normally makes the Thames rise by 21ft every six hours.
With the river tamed and “locked” at high tide to make the boats easier to see, the Queen could cruise calmly at the head of the Royal Squadron, following a shrill whistle from the Princess Elizabeth steam locomotive on Battersea Rail Bridge above.
Behind her in the Royal Squadron were the rest of the Royal family and, of course, the Middletons, including a rather conservatively dressed Pippa.
Then came the Dunkirk “Little Ships”, the lifeboats and the fireboats, representing service and duty, the twin touchstones of the Queen’s 60-year reign.
Above all, though, this was a day for fun. Among the 10 music barges carrying floating bands and orchestras down river, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the last boat in the flotilla, cheekily conjured up the James Bond theme music as it passed MI6 headquarters at Vauxhall Cross and gave the sodden crowds an impromptu rendition of Singin’ in the Rain.
Everywhere along the seven-mile route, there were individual tributes to the Queen. These ranged from the full-sized horse puppet Joey, from the hit West End play War Horse, rearing up in salute on the roof of the National Theatre to a troupe of dancers atop the Royal Festival Hall using semaphore to spell out Happy Diamond Jubilee.
“Just wonderful,” the Queen said to the Duke of Edinburgh as they saw the Joey puppet. “Marvellous,” he replied.
After two and a half years of planning, the only thing the pageant organisers could not control was the weather, which only worsened as the day wore on and forced the cancellation of a planned fly-past of nine Naval helicopters.
Nothing summed up the day better than the sight of the London Philharmonic’s choir, pausing opposite the Queen, belting out Land of Hope and Glory as rain plastered their hair to their faces.
Not since the band kept playing on the Titanic has there been a more indomitable musical rendition in the face of so much water.
If you could have bottled the droplets dripping from the choir’s chins, it could have been distilled and sold as Essence of Britishness.
The person who would have been the least surprised by the conditions was the Queen herself.
Her Coronation Day, on June 2 1953, was also hit by rain, as some of those in the crowd recalled.
Twins June Palmer and Patricia Roper, 79, attended George VI’s funeral, when it snowed, and the Coronation, when the rain was, if anything, even worse than yesterday.
Despite the deluge and her advancing years Mrs Roper said: “I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.”
Margarette Soulsby, from Dorset, who is the same age as the Queen, slept overnight in the tent that had been set up near Tower Bridge to reunite lost children with their parents, so determined was she to bag a prime spot.
Having notched up the Silver Jubilee of George V in 1935, two Coronations, six royal weddings and four funerals, her only explanation for such doggedness was that: “It is a wonderful celebration,” and “I am very proud to be British.” Others had come from as far away as China, the United States and New Zealand to join the party.
“It’s a once in a lifetime event,” said Michelle Butzbach, 14, who flew over from Germany for the weekend with two friends, said: “We love the Queen and the Royal family and we’ll never get the chance to see anything like this again.”
Yesterday’s pageant set a new record for a flotilla, beating the previous best of a measly 327 vessels set in Bremerhaven, Germany, last year.
It also taught us new words, such as “bascules”, which is the proper name for Tower Bridge’s pivoting roadway.
Adrian Evans, the Pageant Master, said the Queen had been “thrilled” with the event and the Royal family had enjoyed it thoroughly.
“They had the most extraordinary day, there was so much exuberance,” he said. “The Queen stood throughout the whole of it which was extraordinary and we did not expect that.
“I think it is testament to the commitment to all the people who turned out.”
Mr Evans said that apart from the gloomy weather, everything had gone “pretty much to clock work”. The Pageant Master added that the huge crowds and participants who turned out despite the weather were “testament to the British bulldog spirit”.
Not since 1662, when Charles II introduced his Queen, Catherine of Braganza, to the nation with a spectacular river pageant, have so many boats processed down the Thames with such unashamed patriotism.
The event may have been a test of endurance, but it was also happy, and quite glorious.
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