75th Anniversary of Royal Tour to South Africa in 1947

Day 2: 1 st February 1947 The leaving day on the start of  5947 nautical miles to Cape Town Notes from the Captain Agnew’s diary. HMS Vanguard slipped away from the Southern Railway Jetty at 7.20am in poor visibility due to snow & mist. Ashore the Guards and Bands were paraded and ships companies massed to cheer. There was a local flotilla which took over escort duties and the visibility improved which allowed an air escort of Mosquitoes and Sunderland’s arrived. The local flotilla left at 10.40am, at 11.00am Vanguard met the Home Fleet and passed in between two columns of the Home Fleet.         The above picture appeared in the newspaper and this is the commentary that goes with it. Then the ships Implacable, Cleopatra, Diadem & St James formed an escort for HMS Vanguard. This is a wirephoto, telephotography or radiophoto is the sending of pictures by telegraph, telephone or radio. The above is the raw and converts to this picture below.                            

Day 1: 31 st January 1947 This is the start of the journey by the Royal Family as it visits South Africa and I aim to post every day to 13th May when the Royal Family arrived back in England. I will add photos, stamp covers, extracts from the Captains diary etc. There will be a mixture of items for first 2 weeks until the HMS Vanguard arrives in South Africa. I became interested in the Royal Visit 20 years ago when I attended the South African Collectors Society AGM in Chester 2002 and at the end of the meeting there was an auction and I purchased for say £5.00 some envelopes and here is one example. I wrote to the address on the envelope and received a response. Predictably being 55 years after the event the next door neighbour told me that the resident had passed away 20 years prior. From there my collection has grown and with the initial support of two members, Ian Shapiro (who I met and was impressed with his knowledge and collection of the Royal Visit material) and the late