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The Royal Yacht Britannia, Ocean Drive, Leith, Edinburgh EH6 6JJ

Tel: 0131 555 5566 Email us: [email protected]

The Royal Yacht Britannia is open, start your tour on the Ground Floor of Ocean Terminal

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Crew of The Royal Yacht Britannia Yotties. Royal Collection Trust / © His Majesty King Charles III 2023.

The ‘Yotties’, the Royal Yachtsmen, had a daily rum ration up until the 1970s.

Once the Royal Family stopped bringing a Rolls Royce on board, the Garage was used as a beer store.

Former Royal Yachtsmen

During Britannia's 44 years in service, there were an estimated 3,295 crew who proudly served aboard the Royal Yacht.

Below are lists of the former Officers and Royal Yachtsmen. They were meticulously compiled over a five year period by M J Hill [Lt Cdr Royal Navy, LSA (S) HM Yacht Britannia 1960-63]. We are very grateful to him for his dedication to this project which was first published in October 2013. Please note that this list generally reflects when someone joined Britannia, be it for the first, second, or third time, and what their role was at that time, it does not always take into account any subsequent promotions gained whilst aboard.

Royal Yachtsmen (alphabetical order) Royal Yachtsmen (date joined)

Visiting Britannia

Tripadvisor’s No.1 UK Attraction 2023

Start your tour at our Ticket Centre, currently located on the Ground Floor of Ocean Terminal. Please note that tickets purchased in person are by card/contactless only.

Please pre-book your tickets to guarantee admission.

Due to upcoming construction work at Ocean Terminal Shopping Centre , Britannia will be closed 25-28 June.

Click on the Visit page for more information before you visit.

Step aboard to enjoy a great day out!

Fingal Hotel

Get away from the everyday aboard Britannia’s sister ship, Fingal. Extend your visit with a stay in one of Fingal’s luxurious cabins, your own oasis by the sea.

AA Hotel of the Year Scotland, AA five-star hotel and 2 AA Rosettes

Learn more: fingal.co.uk

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The Royal Yacht Britannia : A History of Queen Elizabeth II’s Favorite Palace

By Lisa Liebman

The Royal Yacht Britannia in Hong Kong during its last voyage in July of 1997.

The christening of The Royal Yacht Britannia serves as a cheeky season opener to The Crown . Black-and-white Pathé News–style footage shows a soon-to-be-crowned Queen Elizabeth II (Claire Foy) cheered on by shipbuilders as she launches her new 412-foot yacht. “I hope that this brand-new vessel, like your brand-new queen, will prove to be dependable and constant. Capable of weathering any storm,” she says about the royal replacement for the Victoria and Albert III . By the series’ season finale, set 44 years later, both the sovereign and the floating palace she christened Britannia will have hit rough seas—the cost of repairing the creaky old vessel and the modern role of the monarchy both in question. Ultimately, the yacht that undertook 968 official voyages all over the world, hosting dignitaries—including 13 US presidents—at receptions and banquets, was dry-docked near Edinburgh, Scotland, where it continues to be a popular tourist attraction. Here are some of the most buoyant facts about the palace the Queen famously said was “the one place where I can truly relax.”

The sun room on the Royal Yacht Britannia as photographed in 1981.

In a nod to the country’s post-war austerity, Elizabeth scaled back the design of the ship that her father, King George VI, had commissioned just two days before he died. Rather than following the opulent plan laid out by the Scottish firm McInnes Gardner & Partners, she opted for the understated elegance envisioned by architect Sir Hugh Casson, who described “running a lawn mower over the Louis XVIl adornments” in favor of simple white walls, lilac-gray carpeting, and “a bit of gilding in grand places.” Elizabeth and her husband, Prince Phillip, were said to have personally chosen the furniture—much of it, including linens, recycled from the Victoria and Albert —fabrics (florals, chintz, toile), and paintings.

Prince Charles and Princess Diana on board the Royal Yacht Britannia as they prepare to depart on their honeymoon cruise in 1981.

As a former Royal Navy Commander, Prince Phillip also saw to the ship’s technical details, and his Bluebottle racing yacht inspired the Britannia ’s navy-hued hull. Outer decks were made of two-inch Burmese teak. The steering wheel was reclaimed from Britannia ’s namesake, King Edward VII’s 1893 racing yacht; a wheelhouse wheel came from George V’s racing yacht; and a gold-and-white binnacle (housing the ship’s compass) was salvaged from King George III’s yacht and installed on the Veranda deck. Fittings from former royal ships were also reused.

The drawing room on the Royal Yacht Britannia as photographed in 1978.

The 4,000-ton yacht had a crew of 220 Royal Yachtsmen who lived on board, about 45 household staff, and occasionally a 26-member Royal Marine embarked to entertain dignitaries. The monarch often welcomed guests from the ship’s grand staircase. (Stairs leading from the Veranda to the Royal deck were sometimes transformed into a water slide for the kids.) Britannia ’s apartments were designed like those of a first-class ocean liner. A 56-seat state dining room, where many of the gifts given to the monarch (a wood-carved shark from Pitcairn Island, a bejeweled gold statue from Bangkok) were displayed, was the scene of formal dinners with guests such as Sir Winston Churchill, Frank Sinatra, Nelson Mandela, and Bill and Hillary Clinton. More intimate gatherings were held in the Queen’s official reception room, a smaller state drawing room with floral upholstered pieces, simple wood tables, an electric fireplace, and a Welmar baby grand piano bolted to the deck—played by everyone from Sir Noël Coward to Princesses Diana and Margaret. The teak-clad sun lounge, with rattan furniture and a toile loveseat, was Elizabeth’s favorite place—where she had her breakfast, afternoon tea, and also enjoyed her favorite Dubonnet and gin cocktails.

The Queen’s sitting room on the Royal Yacht Britannia as photographed in 1981.

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A ship elevator reserved for royal use moved between the Upper and Shelter Decks. The latter is where four Royal Apartments (bedrooms), including the Queen and Prince Phillip’s connecting compartments, were located. Hers featured florals, his had red accents. Elizabeth’s understated Upper Deck private sitting room, done in pastels and neutrals, served as the office where she conducted state business. Phillip used his sitting room, with its wood desk facing a model of his first command, the HMS Magpie , as his study. Below deck there was a wine cellar, as well as a cargo hold that could carry a barge, speed- and sailboats, plus a royal Range Rover and Rolls-Royce. The yacht could also be converted into a hospital (though it never was).

The Queen shed a tear at the decommissioning ceremony for thye Royal Yacht Britannia.

As depicted in The Crown, Britannia ’s final official trip was to Hong Kong in 1997, where Prince Charles attended the handover of the territory to China. By then, Prime Minister Tony Blair’s administration was complaining that the £11 million a year needed to keep the boat afloat couldn’t be justified. With Queen Elizabeth, Prince Phillip, and all of their children in attendance, Britannia was decommissioned at a ceremony in Portsmouth, England on December 11, 1997, with the monarch seen wiping away a tear. The yacht, now docked in Leith, Scotland, is open to the public as a museum and events space. (Prior to their wedding, Princess Anne and Mark Phillips’s daughter Zara Phillips and her fiancé Mike Tindall had a celebration there.) Visitors will note that every clock on board reads 3:01, the exact time the Queen disembarked her beloved Britannia for the final time on that December day.

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The Story Behind the Royal Family's Yacht, Britannia

The ship hosted four royal honeymoons in its 44 years of service.

Often referred to as the last royal yacht, the Britannia was decommissioned in 1997, and despite some efforts , there are no signs of a new one in the near future. Though its seafaring days may be behind it (the ship now serves as a tourist attraction in Edinburgh, Scotland), the Britannia remains an important artifact and a peek behind the curtain of royal life—it even garnered a prominent place in the fifth season of The Crown . Below, a few of its most notable moments throughout history.

It was the first royal yacht designed for ocean travel.

The ship was built by John Brown & Co at the same shipyard in Clydebank, Scotland in the same location the famous ocean liners the Queen Elizabeth and Queen Mary were constructed. With 12,000 horsepower, the ship could travel at a maximum 22.5 knots (approximately 25 miles per hour), ideal for ocean-going diplomacy. Prior to its launch in 1953, the royal family used ships from the Royal Navy or even passenger liners for the overseas portions of the royal tour.

In its 44 years of service, the HMY Britannia traveled around 1.1 million miles.

It was commissioned just two days before the death of King George VI.

The King was already in failing health by the time the designs for the HMY Britannia were submitted, and the hope was that traveling might help alleviate some of his symptoms. However, just two days after the John Brown shipyard in Clydebank, Scotland received the order the King passed away on February 6, 1952.

It would take just over a year for the ship to be completed, during which time its name remained a secret—it wasn't announced until the ship's official launch in April of 1953, less than two months before the Queen's coronation . Elizabeth cracked a bottle of English wine (in the post-war era, champagne was considered too extravagant for the launch of a ship) and announced, "I name this ship Britannia … I wish success to her and all who sail in her."

It was created to double as a hospital.

When Britannia was first envisioned, less than a decade after the end of World War II, the designers sought to make it as functional as possible, crafting a space that could be converted from an ocean-going royal residence to a seafaring hospital during any possible future wartime. The main veranda was laid out and re-enforced so that it could support a helicopter landing and the laundry was made much larger than on a standard naval vessel to accommodate the potential patients. Though the ship was never actually put to that purpose, it was pressed into service on a rescue mission to help evacuate European nationals from South Yemen in 1986.

The ship was home to a lot of history.

Long before it became a floating museum, the Britannia had an eye for history. The gold and white binnacle housed on the ship's veranda deck was originally part of the HMY Royal George , a royal yacht that served Queen Victoria . Likewise, some of the bed linens used by Queen Elizabeth aboard the vessel were originally made for Victoria's bed for one of the previous royal yachts.

Britannia's steering wheel was lifted from her namesake, the racing yacht HMY Britannia , built in 1893 for King Edward VII .

It was redesigned to be less opulent.

Despite the sense of luxury that the term "royal yacht" inspires, the Queen and Prince Philip were actually concerned when they began overseeing the project in 1952 that the original interior design plans by the design firm McInnes Gardner & Partners were too lavish for a country still recovering from the war. The interiors were ultimately redesigned by Sir Hugh Casson and received very minimal updates throughout her 44 years of service.

But it still had homey touches—by royal standards.

Suffice to say that even low-key royal living is a fairly high class. In addition to the 56-seat State Dining Room, which hosted luminaries including Winston Churchill, Noel Coward, Nelson Mandela, and multiple US Presidents, the ship also sported a formal staircase where the Queen would greet guests, separate bedrooms and sitting rooms for both Her Majesty and the Duke of Edinburgh, and a phone system designed to match the unique configurations of Buckingham Palace's telephones.

In the early years of the Britannia's life it was also home to the Queen's Rolls-Royce Phantom V which was hoisted and lowered from a special garage compartment at port so that the Queen could drive her own car at each location. The space was ever so slightly too small, forcing the bumpers to be removed in order to get it into the garage without damage and then refitted when the car was removed. Ultimately Elizabeth began using cars provided for her at port instead and the garage was converted into a storage area for beer.

The steering crew couldn't see where they were going.

Life on board the HMY Britannia was far from typical for her crew. To begin with, due to the prestige and pressure of the position, the commanding officer of the royal yacht was always a flag officer, most commonly a Rear Admiral, although the first two to serve were Vice Admirals, and Britannia 's final CO was a Commodore.

While working, the crew reportedly used hand signals to communicate rather than shouting orders, in order to maintain a sense of quiet and calm for the royal residents. It was also the last ship in the royal navy where the crew members slept in hammocks, a practice that they maintained until 1973.

Perhaps the most unusual element of the ship's functioning, though, was the steering. While on most ships, the steering wheel sits on the bridge, overlooking the front of the vessel, Britannia 's was on the deck below, in the wheelhouse, which meant that the yachtsmen who were actually doing the steering couldn't see where they were going. The crew got around this rather surprising pitfall by using voice pipes from the bridge to confer navigational orders.

It was a royal honeymoon essential.

No fewer than four royal couples celebrated their honeymoons in the HMY Britannia 's honeymoon suite (the only room onboard with a double bed.)

Princess Margaret started the tradition in 1960 for her Caribbean honeymoon with Anthony Armstrong-Jones , a quiet, formal affair where dinners were taken in full evening dress every night. Things didn't go quite as smoothly for Princess Anne on her honeymoon with Captain Mark Phillips in 1973—storms and 20-foot waves left the couple stricken with seasickness for the first week of their Caribbean cruise. Prince Charles and Princess Diana famously spent their 1981 honeymoon on a Mediterranean cruise aboard the yacht. The crew managed to duck the press so efficiently they garnered the nickname "the ghost ship." The final royal honeymoon aboard the Britannia was taken by Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson , Duchess of York in 1986 when the couple traveled around the Azores.

In memory of Diana, Princess of Wales, who was killed in an automobile accident in Paris, France on August 31, 1997.

And a family vacation spot.

In addition to her diplomatic duties on royal tours and her service as a post-wedding retreat, the Britannia was also a vessel for family vacations. During the summer months, the royal family would often take off on what became known as the Western Isles tour, cruising around the western isles of Scotland. During the trip, the family would play games and have barbecues on the islands. The stairway off of the veranda was sometimes even converted into a waterslide for the younger royals. The tour often included a stop off at the Castle of Mey to visit the Queen Mother, then making berth in Aberdeen so that the Queen could travel to her favorite summer home, Balmoral .

The Queen openly wept when HMY Britannia was decommissioned in 1997.

With so many memories around the yacht, it's not hard to understand why the decommissioning of the Britannia was upsetting for the royal family. Though plans were initially drawn up for a replacement yacht, the government ultimately determined not to fund the effort. After the Queen officially took her leave of it in 1997, the ship was placed in the port of Leith in Scotland where it serves as a floating museum and events venue . All of the clocks on board remain stopped at 3:01, the exact time that Her Majesty disembarked for the last time.

Zara Phillips And Mike Tindall Host Pre Wedding Party On Britannia

It was used for a reception for Zara Phillips before her wedding.

Though it's no longer used as their private vessel, the Britannia 's connection to the royal family didn't end in 1997. In 2011 on the night before her wedding, the Queen's oldest granddaughter Zara Phillips contracted the ship for a reception. Though her grandmother wasn't in attendance Zara celebrated her upcoming marriage to Mike Tindall onboard along with her mother and her cousins Prince Harry, Prince William and Kate, Princess Eugenie, and Princess Beatrice.

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Lauren Hubbard is a freelance writer and Town & Country contributor who covers beauty, shopping, entertainment, travel, home decor, wine, and cocktails.

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The Retirement of a Longtime Royal Yacht

December 11, 1997

Britannia, a vessel that had served as the royal yacht of British monarch Queen Elizabeth II for more than four decades, was decommissioned in a ceremony at the Portsmouth naval base on England’s south coast. Along with highlighting Britannia’s “brass fittings gleaming in the winter sunshine and flags rippling in a brisk breeze,” the Associated Press (AP) focused on the royal couple who were on hand for this weekday ceremony.

“Queen Elizabeth II struggled with her emotions and Prince Phillip wiped away a tear as they bid farewell Thursday to the magnificent yacht on which they toured a diminishing empire,” reported AP. “As the setting sun cast its golden light on the yacht, the strains of ‘Rule Britannia, Britannia rules the waves,’ played by a pipe band, proved too much for even the long-practiced royal composure.”

In its account of this decommissioning ceremony, the Ottawa Citizen noted that “no royal yacht was ever as versatile or well-traveled as Britannia.” This newspaper also reported, “Few ships have sailed 1.92 kilometers [1 million nautical miles]. Only this one has done so using its original engines.”

The 412-foot (126-meter) Britannia had been built at the shipyard of the engineering firm John Brown and Company in the Scottish town of Clydebank. The yacht was launched by Queen Elizabeth on April 16, 1953, a little over a year after she ascended the British throne following the death of her father, King George VI. Britannia was officially commissioned into service on January 11, 1954.

Britannia’s maiden voyage took place that April, when she transported Princess Anne and Prince Charles from Portsmouth to the British colony (now independent republic) of Malta so that they could reunite with their parents at the end of the royal couple’s Commonwealth Tour. The following month, Elizabeth and Phillip traveled on Britannia for the first time during a a visit to the port city of Tobruk in the Kingdom (now State) of Libya.

Britannia was the 83 rd British royal yacht in an unbroken line of such vessels going all the way back to King Charles II, who formally reigned as monarch of England, Scotland, and Ireland from 1660 to 1685. Charles used his pioneering 50.5-foot (15.4-meter) vessel named Mary primarily for racing. Britannia was only the second British royal yacht bearing that name. The first one was a racing cutter (a type of high-speed sailing vessel) built in 1893 for Queen Victoria’s son Edward, Prince of Wales, who later ascended the throne as King Edward VII after the death of his mother.

Elizabeth’s royal yacht Britannia ultimately transported her, other members of the British Roytal Family, and various dignitaries on a grand total of 272 visits in British waters and 696 foreign trips. One of the yacht’s more notable trips abroad occurred during the summer of 1959, when Elizabeth traveled on Britannia via the newly opened Saint Lawrence Seaway to get to Chicago. This voyage made Elizabeth the first British monarch to visit the Windy City. President Dwight D. Eisenhower was on board the yacht for part of the that cruise through the Saint Lawrence Seaway. Other U.S. presidents who spent time on board Britannia were Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton.

During her many years of service, Britannia also performed significant roles that went well beyond providing a means of transportation for the British Royal Family. In 1986, for example, the yacht was used to evacuate over 1,000 refugees from the port city of Aden after a civil war erupted in what was then the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen on the Arabian Peninsula.

At the decommissioning ceremony for Britannia in 1997, Elizabeth took time to say a few words about the yacht and its importance. “Looking back over forty-four years we can all reflect with pride and gratitude upon this great ship which has served the country, the Royal Navy and my family with such distinction,” said the queen.

In the time since she was retired from active service, Britannia has been berthed at the Port of Leith in Scotland’s capital city of Edinburgh. The yacht, which has been included in the National Historic Fleet (a list of historically significant vessels located in the United Kingdom), is now a popular tourist attraction. A registered charity known as the Royal Yacht Britannia Trust is responsible for Britannia’s continued care and maintenance.

For more information on the British royal yacht Britannia, please check out https://www.royalyachtbritannia.co.uk/about/history/

'The Crown': The Real History of the Royal Yacht Britannia and Its Significance to the Queen

Britannia served the Queen and her family until the very end.

The penultimate season of The Crown starts by going back to a scene in 1953 when Queen Elizabeth II is seen launching the Royal Yacht Britannia and without a doubt, the yacht itself becomes the first issue of contention in what is another season of The Crown that focuses on one of the most contentious decades in the lives of the royal family.

Commissioned in 1954, Her Majesty's Yacht Britannia necessitates repair – an act that's costly for the government to bear. In the first episode "Queen Victoria Syndrome," when Queen Elizabeth II ( Imelda Staunton ) requests Prime Minister John Major ( Jonny Lee Miller ) to incur the expenses for the yacht's repair, she finds herself disappointed as the Prime Minister reminds the Queen of the scrutiny such a big public expenditure will attract. This hesitation on the part of the Prime Minister to agree to the repair easily sends the Queen, who's already on the brink of dwindling popularity, into an emotional tizzy. Queen Elizabeth II reminds John Major that she expects her minor requests to be fulfilled in return for her service to the nation. It's clearly hinted that the Queen feels a deeper connection with Britannia – one which she compares to that of a home – as the Queen's relationship with Britannia is nearly as old as her relationship with the crown. In tracing the journey of Britannia, one can trace the journey of the Queen herself.

Before Britannia found its way to the heart of Queen Elizabeth II and the royal family, Victoria & Albert III, which was built for Queen Victoria, served the royal family for 38 years. Although it was named after Queen Victoria, she never stepped foot on it. Eventually, the former royal yacht was decommissioned in 1954. The requirement for a new royal yacht soon emerged under the reign of King George VI. The King wanted the ship to be more than just a luxury. Hence, the ship was supposed to also serve as a hospital during the war, the opportunity for which never came. Also, it was hoped that the yacht will help the King cope with the troubles of his ailing health. Finally, on February 4, 1952, the John Brown & Co shipyard in Clydebank received the order for a new ship that would go on to become the Britannia. Unfortunately, just two days after the order was given, King George VI passed away, an event that sets into motion the reign of Queen Elizabeth II, who was pushed into the role of the monarch suddenly.

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Queen Elizabeth II Introduced Britannia To The World

Upon the demise of King George VI, the responsibility to look over the construction and commissioning of Britannia fell on the Queen herself, and it was a responsibility that she fulfilled in glorious fashion as the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh were closely involved in the pre-commission years of the royal yacht. The original design was proposed by the design firm McInnes Gardner & Partner, but the design was judged to be too lavish for a country recovering from the aftermath of a war. Hence, the Queen and the Duke opted for a design in tune with the times. In fact, the Queen herself picked the color of the paint for the walls and the woodwork and metalwork. As clarified by the Queen in "Queen Victoria Syndrome," the yacht meant more than a luxury for the Royal Highness.

Among the many residences that Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip owned, Britannia was one that reflected the Queen's preferences the most for what a dream house would look like. Although a home away at sea, Britannia was easily the dearest of all places for the Queen who witnessed her home's construction as well as her disassembly all in one lifetime. As shown in the first episode of Season 5, when Queen Elizabeth II proudly introduced the ship to the world by saying, "I name this ship Britannia… I wish success to her and all who sail in her," she was introducing the world to something extremely personal; something that she was highly proud of – her very own home. Britannia was launched by the Queen on April 16, 1953 , and commissioned on January 11, 1954. Royal Yacht Britannia served Prince Charles and Princess Anne on her maiden voyage, taking them to the Queen and the Duke at the end of the royals' Commonwealth tour. The senior royals were also hosted by the royal yacht in May of the same year.

Royal Yacht Britannia Was Integral To The Royal Family's Life

Britannia was not merely a means of transport for the royal family. Instead, the royal yacht had become an essential part of the royals' lives by the end of its 44-year-long tenure. Britannia was a constant companion of the Queen on many historic visits. In 1959, Britannia took the Queen to Chicago for an event that celebrated the opening of the St. Lawrence seaway in Canada. During the visit, President Dwight Eisenhower was hosted on board. Aboard Britannia, the Queen also traveled to the UAE for her first official visit. In 1986, the royal yacht was sent on a rescue mission to save refugees from the civil war in Yemen , fulfilling King George's dream of having a royal yacht that also served the people in times of distress. Over the million miles that the yacht traversed, Britannia hosted many more dignitaries such as Presidents Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, Nelson Mandela, and Prime Minister Winston Churchill, among others.

The royalty of the yacht also matched that of the many other residences with royal bedrooms, a 56-seat dining room, drawing rooms, and ample cabins for the officers. The yacht also contained a garage for the Queen's Rolls-Royce which served her on all visits. The yacht was also a vacation home for the royal family on the Western Isles tour, which the family would undertake during the summers. The Britannia has taken the Queen on many journeys to her castle at Balmoral, the Queen's summer retreat.

Britannia Hosted Multiple Royal Honeymoons

Britannia was also dear to the other royals in the family as well. Using Britannia for the royal honeymoon was a tradition instated by Princess Margaret and Anthony Armstrong-Jones in 1960. Princess Anne and Captain Mark Phillips were also hosted on board for their royal honeymoon in 1973. Probably the most famous royal couple of them all, Prince Charles and Princess Diana also spent their honeymoon on Britannia, away from the media. The string of royal honeymoons on Britannia came to an end with Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson's journey in 1986. Although all these couples later parted ways, Britannia definitely proved to be the perfect host for them in the happier times of their lives.

Queen Elizabeth II Bid Farewell To Britannia With Heavy Heart

By the beginning of the 1990s, Britannia was already in its waning years as, naturally, more than 40 years of service had begun taking a toll on her. Season 5 of The Crown also focuses on this phase of Britannia, when questions around the repair and replacement of Britannia started coming into focus. Episode 1 of Season 5 of The Crown portrays the Queen directly asking Prime Minister Major for a "sign-off" on the repairs of the Britannia. However, it cannot be confirmed whether the Queen really made a request to the Prime Minister directly.

In 1994, the Conservative government headed by Prime Minister Major announced that Britannia will be decommissioned in 1997 owing to the massive cost of keeping the aged royal yacht running. In 2018, it was revealed by The Times that a senior official in Buckingham Palace had written to the cabinet office in 1995, expressing the Queen's welcoming stance on a replacement for Britannia. The mentioned letter was discovered in the national archive. With the general elections approaching in 1997, Britannia's existence became a national issue again with the Tories going back on their decision regarding the Britannia's decommissioning in hopes of finding some favor with the public. But fates had different things in store for Royal Yacht Britannia as the majority win by Tony Blair in 1997 sealed the fate of the yacht for once and for all.

In 1997, Britannia was finally decommissioned post its last voyage , taking Prince Charles to Hong Kong and back after the handover of the former colony to the People's Republic of China on July 1. The Queen's affection for the royal yacht found its strongest expression when she and Prince Philip were seen wiping tears off their face during the decommissioning ceremony at Portsmouth. Bidding farewell to her dear Britannia, the Queen said, "Looking back over forty-four years we can all reflect with pride and gratitude upon this great ship which has served the country, the Royal Navy and my family with such distinction."

Today, Britannia can be visited at the Port of Leith in Edinburgh where it remains a five-star visitor attraction . Unquestionably, Britannia served the Queen and her family in several ways through its 44 years of service. Season 5 of The Crown uses Britannia as a metaphor for the waning control of the monarchy itself as the Queen struggles to enjoy the same popularity that she once used to in light of the controversial events that haunted the family in the decade. While the initial problems with Britannia marked the beginning of the fall, the ultimate decommissioning brought to closure a decade of turmoil. Irrespective of the place The Crown allocates to it in the scheme of priorities for the royal family, the Royal Yacht Britannia was one home that the Queen loved dearly, if not the most, as a result of the many memories attached to the last royal yacht.

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The History Hit Miscellany of Facts, Figures and Fascinating Finds

20th Century

10 Facts About Royal Yacht Britannia

Peta Stamper

28 nov 2022.

The 83rd and last in a long line of royal yachts, HMY Britannia has become one of the most famous ships in the world. Now permanently moored at Edinburgh’s Port of Leith, the floating palace is a visitor attraction welcoming some 300,000 people aboard each year.

For Queen Elizabeth II, Britannia was the ideal residence for state visits and peaceful royal family holidays and honeymoons. For the British public, Britannia was a symbol of Commonwealth. For the 220 naval officers who lived aboard Britannia , and the royal family, the 412-foot-long yacht was home.

Having travelled more than a million nautical miles over 44 years of service to the British Crown, Her Majesty’s beloved boat was decommissioned in 1997. Here are 10 facts about life aboard HMY Britannia.

1. Britannia was launched by Queen Elizabeth II on 16 April 1953 using a bottle of wine, not champagne

Champagne is traditionally smashed against a ship’s hull during launching ceremonies. However, in a post-war climate champagne was seen as too frivolous, so a bottle of Empire wine was used instead.

Britannia launched from the John Brown & Company shipyard in Clydebank, Scotland.

2. Britannia was the 83rd Royal Yacht

King George VI , Elizabeth II’s father, had first commissioned the royal yacht that would become Britannia in 1952. The previous official boat had belonged to Queen Victoria and was rarely used. The tradition of royal yachts had been started by Charles II in 1660.

George decided that the Royal Yacht Britannia should both be a regal vessel as well as a functional one.

3. Britannia had two emergency functions

Britannia was designed to be converted into a hospital ship in time of war, although that function was never used. Additionally, as part of the Cold War plan Operation Candid, in the event of nuclear war the ship would become a refuge off the north-west coast of Scotland for the Queen and Prince Philip.

4. Her maiden voyage was from Portsmouth to Grand Harbour in Malta

She carried Prince Charles and Princess Anne to Malta to meet the Queen and Prince Philip at the end of the royal couple’s Commonwealth tour. The Queen stepped aboard Britannia for the first time in Tobruk on 1 May 1954.

Over the next 43 years, Britannia would transport the Queen, members of the Royal Family and various dignitaries on some 696 foreign visits.

The HMY Britannia on a visit by the Queen to Canada in 1964

Image Credit: Royal Canadian Navy, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

5. Britannia hosted some of the 20th century’s most notable figures

In July 1959, Britannia sailed the newly opened Saint Lawrence Seaway to Chicago where she docked, making the Queen the first British monarch to visit the city. US President Dwight Eisenhower hopped aboard Britannia for part of the journey.

In later years, Presidents Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton would also step aboard. Charles and Diana, the Prince and Princess of Wales, took their honeymoon cruise on Britannia in 1981.

6. The crew were volunteers from the Royal Navy

After 365 days’ service, crew members could be admitted to the Permanent Royal Yacht Service as Royal Yachtsmen (‘Yotties’) and serve until they either chose to leave or were dismissed. As a result, some yachtsmen served on Britannia for over 20 years.

The crew also included a detachment of Royal Marines, who would dive underneath the ship each day while moored away from home to check for mines or other threats.

7. All royal children were allocated a ‘Sea Daddy’ on board the ship

The ‘sea daddies’ were primarily tasked with looking after the children and keeping them entertained (games, picnics and water fights) during voyages. They also oversaw the children’s chores, including cleaning the life rafts.

8. There was a ‘Jelly Room’ onboard for the royal children

The yacht had a total of three galley kitchens where Buckingham Palace ‘s chefs prepared meals. Among these galleys was a chilled room called the ‘Jelly Room’ for the sole purpose of storing royal children’s jellied desserts.

9. It cost around £11 million every year to run Britannica

The cost of running Britannia was always an issue. In 1994, another expensive refit for the ageing vessel was proposed. Whether or not to refit or commission a new royal yacht entirely came down to the election result of 1997. With repairs at a proposed cost of £17 million, Tony Blair’s new Labour government were unwilling to commit public funds to replace Britannica.

HMY Britannia in 1997, London

Image Credit: Chris Allen, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons

10. All the clocks on board remain stopped at 3:01pm

In December 1997, Britannia was officially decommissioned. The clocks have been kept at 3:01pm – the exact moment the Queen went ashore for the last time following the ship’s decommissioning ceremony, during which the Queen shed a rare public tear.

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Reflecting on Edinburgh's Royal Yacht Britannia 25 years after arriving in Leith

As the nation gears up for the historic coronation of King Charles III, we wind the clock back a quarter of a century when the monarchy's own Royal Yacht Britannia made her way home to her final resting place in sunny Leith.

12:54, 5 MAY 2023

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When the Royal Yacht Britannia was decommissioned in 1997 following forty-four years of serving the country, the late Queen Elizabeth II thanked the ship and its crew for providing "great support" to the nation.

Having sailed one million miles, carrying over 700 hundreds royal visits at home and overseas, the Queen hailed the ship's achievements as "a great testament to those who designed and built her."

The year after the ship was decommissioned, it made its way to Leith where it has been an ever-present for 25 years as we approach the momentous anniversary of the Royal Yacht Britannia docking in Edinburgh.

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Thousands lined the dock as the impressive vessel made it way into the harbour in 1998. Many now know it as one of the capital's most popular tourist attractions, welcoming around 350,000 visitors every year.

Images taken on May 5, 1998 show hundreds of excited locals in awe as the vessel sails into Leith Docks, played in by a pipe band.

As well as the ship herself, a special museum is also present within Edinburgh's Ocean Terminal Shopping Centre where visitors can read about every landmark achievement the ship made and just how much the late monarch loved it.

The Royal Yacht was in service from 1954 until 1997 and was the 83rd such vessel since King Charles II acceded to the throne in 1660. During her extensive career, the yacht visited more than 600 ports in 135 different countries.

HMY Britannia, as she is also known by, was built at the shipyard of John Brown & Co. Ltd in Clydebank. The Queen officially launched the vessel on April 16, 1553 and commissioned her on January 11, 1954.

The ship was designed to be converted into a hospital ship in time of war, although this capability was never used. In the event of a nuclear war, it was intended for the Queen and her husband Prince Philip to take refuge onboard off the north-west coast of Scotland.

Britannia being towed from Portsmouth May 1998 to her new Scottish berth the Firth of Forth at Leith near Edinburgh.

At 20:00 on 17 January 1986, the Yacht dropped anchor at Khormaksar Beach. Civil war had broken out in South Yemen and ships were urgently required to evacuate British nationals and others trapped by fighting. As a non-combatant Royal Navy ship, Britannia would be able to enter territorial waters without further inflaming the conflict.

In 1994, the government announced the yacht's retirement. It last underwent a major refit in 1987 with a further refit at an estimated cost of £17million necessary in 1996-97 but would only have prolonged her life for a further five years.

In view of her age, even after the refit she would be difficult to maintain and expensive to run.

In a special sending-off ceremony letter, written by the Queen as one last goodbye to Britannia, she said: "Together with members of my family, Prince Phillip and I join you today to pay tribute to Britannia and give our thanks to all who have been part of her company.

"Looking back over forty-four years we can all reflect with pride and gratitude upon this great ship which has served the country, the Royal Navy and my family with such distinction."

She continued: "It is with sadness that we must now say goodbye to Britannia. It is appropriate that with this final event show bows out in the style which is so typical of the manner in which her business has always been conducted."

Now, the Royal Yacht Britannia has been awarded a five-star visitor attraction status by Best UK Attraction with guests able to discover five decks of stories from the Royal Family and the 220 Royal Yachtsmen who served onboard.

The vessel has also been converted into a luxury floating hotel where guests can stay the night, as well as visit the Royal Deck Tea Room.

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The Royal Yacht Britannia: How The Queen created a floating home and theatre of state

Queen Elizabeth II
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The Queen was the best-travelled monarch in British history. John Goodall looks at the story of the Royal Yacht Britannia, now permanently moored in Leith, Edinburgh. Photographs by Paul Highnam.

‘I name this ship Britannia . I wish success to her and to all who sail in her.’

With these words, on April 16, 1953, The Queen released a bottle of ‘Empire wine’ — a post-war economy in place of Champagne — to launch the Royal Yacht Britannia . The name of the ship had been kept secret and, hearing it declared, the assembled crowd gave a huge roar of approval. To the sound of more cheers, and as a band played Rule Britannia , the 4,000-ton hull, No 691, slid slowly down the slipway from the Clydebank shipyard of John Brown & Co, into the river, and was towed by tugs to the fitting-out basin upstream.

From as early as 1939, bids had been invited to construct a new Royal Yacht capable of long-distance travel. War and austerity put paid to the initiative, but a visit by George VI to South Africa in 1947 on board the battleship HMS Vanguard revived it. As The Queen commented at Britannia ’s launch, George VI ‘felt most strongly, as I do, that a yacht was a necessity and not a luxury for the Head of our great British Commonwealth, between whose countries the sea is no barrier, but the natural and indestructible highway’.

Fig 1: The Sun Lounge. The wall-mounted telephone to the right is identical to those installed in Buckingham Palace. The Royal Yacht Britannia. ©Paul Highnam for Country Life

In October 1951, therefore, the Labour Prime Minister Clement Attlee announced the government’s intention to build a yacht capable of conversion into a hospital ship in time of war. A General Election, however, almost immediately passed responsibility for realising the £2.1 million project to a Conservative government under Sir Winston Churchill and the King authorised the commission in writing on February 5, 1952, the day before he died. Britannia claims to be the 83rd Royal Yacht in succession to Mary , which was presented to Charles II by the people of Amsterdam at the Restoration in 1660. The first steam-powered Royal Yacht was launched in 1843.

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What Happened To The Royal Yacht Britannia?

By Elise Taylor

Image may contain Transportation Vehicle Yacht Boat Person Officer Captain Flag Clothing Hat and People

The Crown season five begins and ends with the same plot point: The Royal Yacht Britannia. The vessel serves as a – fairly obvious – metaphor in the first episode, where Imelda Staunton’s Queen Elizabeth describes it as “a floating, seagoing version of me.” The problem with her metaphorical marine self? It’s in desperate need of multi-million pound repairs.

She asks British prime minister John Major, played by Jonny Lee Miller, whether the government might be able to help foot the bill. He, in turn, asks if the royal family might front the cost, given the public pushback they both might receive if such a seemingly extravagant project was approved. In the final episode of the season (a note to the reader: spoilers will follow), Tony Blair and Queen Elizabeth agree to decommission the yacht after Prince Charles’s trip to Hong Kong.

The Crown is known for taking much of its plot material from real-life events. In the case of the Royal Yacht Britannia, though – what really happened to the boat, and how much political controversy did it really cause?

To go back to the beginning, King George VI first commissioned the royal yacht that would become the Britannia in 1952. It was an exciting project, as the previous official boat had belonged to Queen Victoria, and was rarely used. Then, during the early 20th century, England was mostly at war, and making a massive, slow-sailing luxury ship would be a massive security risk in international waters.

Image may contain: Clothing, Coat, Philip Tomalin, People, Person, Accessories, Formal Wear, Tie, Adult, Glasses, and Jacket

The Royal Yacht Britannia, George decided, should both be an extravagant vessel and a functional one, able to double as a hospital if times of war were to arise again. In 1953, the newly crowned Queen Elizabeth christened the ship with a bottle of wine, as champagne was still seen as too extravagant post-war. In 1954, she set sail for the first time.

The Royal Yacht fulfilled many functions, most of them leisurely. Over the years, the boat hosted four royal honeymoons, including that of Princess Diana and Prince Charles, as well as many family vacations. In 1969, after his investiture as the Prince of Wales, Charles hosted an intimate party on board to celebrate. (Newspapers at the time wrote that he danced with his dear friend Lucia Santa Cruz – the very person who eventually introduced him to Camilla Parker Bowles.)

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It also served as a grandiose mode of transport for many royal visits. In 1959, for example, Britannia sailed to Chicago to celebrate the recently opened St Lawrence seaway in Canada, and President Eisenhower joined her on board. Twenty years later, she sailed to Abu Dhabi for her first official visit to the United Arab Emirates, where she held a grand dinner for Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan.

And although Queen Elizabeth's reign was not during wartime, the royal yacht did execute a humanitarian mission, as King George VI had always planned for: In 1986, it sailed to Aden to evacuate over 1,000 refugees from the civil war in Yemen.

The New York Times once described the 412-foot Britannia as “an ordinary yacht what Buckingham Palace is to the house next door.” It wasn’t an exaggeration – Britannia was essentially a floating palace. It had a drawing room, a dining room, two sitting rooms, as well as galleys and cabins for all the officers. The stateroom interiors were just as ornate as any other royal estate, while the bedrooms – which all had their own bathrooms and dressing rooms – were designed to feel surprisingly personal.

“Within the royal apartments, however, the regal elegance gives way to the homey, patched elbow chic of an English country house, with flowered chintz slipcovers, family photographs, and rattan settees, interspersed with the occasional relic of Empire – shark’s teeth from the Solomon Islands here, a golden urn commemorating Nelson’s victory at Trafalgar there,” the New York Times found when it boarded the ship in 1976.

Image may contain Indoors Waiting Room Room Reception Room Reception Home Decor Building and Living Room

The cost of running Britannia was always an issue. Politicians raised questions about its financial value as far back as 1954, when two MPs lobbied for an investigation on why the yacht’s refurbishment would cost £5.8 million, accusing the royal family of waste and extravagance. A government committee later dismissed the accusations. In 1994, the Conservative government ruled the yacht too costly to refurbish, when repairs came in at a whopping 17 million, but then briefly walked back on their decision a few years later.

However, when Tony Blair’s Labour government won the election, and the new government once again declined to pay for Britannia. Britannia’s final journey was to far-flung Hong Kong in 1997, as Prince Charles turned over the British colony back to the Chinese at the end of Britain’s 99-year lease. When they finally decommissioned the boat that summer, the queen cried – one of the few times she’s shown emotion in public. The boat had logged over one million nautical miles.

Today, Britannia sits permanently docked in Edinburgh. Visitors can take tours of its grand galleys, or even rent it out for events. Yet, despite its retirement, the concept of the royal yacht lives on: In 2021, Boris Johnson floated the idea of a new boat. However, a mere eight days ago, Rishi Sunak has scrapped the project – showing that, even now, the concept remains a controversial one.

Image may contain: Adult, Person, Conversation, Diana, Princess of Wales, Lamp, Necklace, Accessories, Jewelry, and Art

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King Charles III yesterday made a poignant return to the Royal Yacht Britannia. A ‘home from home’ for Queen Elizabeth II, the Duke of Edinburgh and their four children, the Royal Yacht Britannia held an important place in the lives of the Royal Family for more than four decades until it was decommissioned in 1997.

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Family holidays, honeymoon and precious private time – the Royal Yacht Britannia brought so much to the Windsors. ‘This was the place out of the public eye, they could relax and be themselves. On board Britannia that was their family time and it was our job to make their stay comfortable,’ one former crew member recalled yesterday.

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Boarding the decommissioned yacht, King Charles no doubt would have been transported back through the decades to the countless voyages he shared with his siblings, cousins and parents – and later his wife and their young sons. During the visit – part of a busy schedule of engagements for Holyrood Week – King Charles sipped rum with sailors, met former crew members and attended a reception in the State Dining Room. ‘To all the marvellous Yotties who keep it all going, you are all brilliant,’ he said, toasting the crew.

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The history of royal yachts dates back to the reign of Charles II who, when he became King of England, Scotland and Ireland on the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, was gifted a yacht called the Mary by his Dutch allies. There have been a total of 82 royal yachts since. As well as providing monarchs and their families a place in which to relax, they have also been deployed on diplomatic missions; a role that was particularly important before royals were able to jet off on planes.

Prince Charles and Princess Anne with their nanny on board the Royal yacht, Britannia at Portsmouth

Although it was Queen Elizabeth II and her family who enjoyed the use of the Britannia, the vessel had been commissioned by her father, King George VI , as a replacement for the ageing Victoria and Albert which was decommissioned in 1939 having been constructed during the reign of Queen Victoria.

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George VI, who reigned over Britain during the Second World War, took a practical approach when planning the new vessel, lest the nation should once again find itself in the throes of conflict, and ensured it could easily be turned into a hospital ship if needed. Sadly, the King died before construction was completed and it was his daughter and son-in-law who had the final say on its design.

The Queen and Prince Philip waving on board Royal Yacht Britannia during an official visit to Kuwait

Image may contain Home Decor Building Indoors Living Room Architecture Furniture Room Rug Lamp Chair and Couch

The state room on the Royal Yacht Britannia

The Britannia set sail on her maiden voyage from Portsmouth to the Grand Harbour in Malta on 14 April 1952, carrying Princess Anne and her brother Prince Charles , who reunited with the then Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh at the end of their Commonwealth tour. The late Queen first boarded the yacht at Tobruk in the country then known as the Kingdom of Libya in May 1954, and she famously became the first British monarch to visit Chicago in 1959 when the yacht docked in the city.

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It became integral to royal life. As a young boy, Prince Charles is said to have stolen pastries from the kitchen of the yacht, and was captured on film playing on the decks and swooping down a makeshift slide. Sir Winston Churchill and Nelson Mandela were among those who dined in the opulent State Dining Room, while Prince Charles and Princess Diana honeymooned on board. It was also the location of fun-filled family holidays, with private home videos and photos shared from the royal archives over the years revealing how the late Queen relaxed on deck as the family whizzed down waterslides.

Season 5 of The Crown featured the Britannia towards the end of her seaworthy days. The series depicts Queen Elizabeth II (played by Imelda Staunton) tries to strong-arm Prime Minister Sir John Major (Johnny Lee Miller) into footing the bill for a sizeable refurbishment, telling him: ‘From the design of the hull to the smallest piece of china, she is a floating, seagoing expression of me.’ The Duke of Edinburgh (Jonathan Pryce) also does his best to compel Sir John to take action.

Image may contain Transportation Vehicle Yacht Boat Ferry Cruiser Navy Military Ship City Water and Waterfront

The Royal Yacht Britannia in Hong Kong

Ultimately, however, it was decided (as in real life) that the ‘costs were too great’ and, in 1994, it was announced the Britannia would be decommissioned. Three years later, the vessel that had given the late Queen so many happy memories embarked on its final voyage – a farewell tour around the UK. On the day of decommissioning, the enormity of the occasion was clear for the world to see, for Her late Majesty was photographed wiping away a tear during the ceremony; a rare public display of emotion for the stoic sovereign.

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Since her retirement, Britannia has been moored in the Port of Leith in Edinburgh and has served as a tourist attraction. It marks the final chapter in a fascinating story of the beloved floating royal residence.

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What happened to the royal family's yacht, Britannia?

The britannia required major maintenance and repairs over the years., where is the royal yacht britannia now.

The British Royal Family 's yacht, the Britannia , is believed to have traveled more than 1 million maritime miles during her 43 years of sailing. Much like its passengers, the Britannia was a regal vessel that carried the royal family overseas for important visits and vacations. However, the yacht also required expensive maintenance.

If you're curious about what became of the yacht after watching The Crown or due to your love for the royal family , look no further — we've done the digging for you.

Although The Crown is a dramatized retelling of the royal family's history, the yacht is very much real. The 412-foot vessel could hold more than 250 guests. The Britannia also hosted U.S. presidents Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton. In 1986, it even served as a shelter for over 1,000 refugees fleeing a civil war in Aden, Yemen .

The Britannia first set sail in 1954 from Portsmouth to Grand Harbor, accompanied by Prince Charles and Princess Anne. The boat was built by the Scottish shipbuilding firm John Brown & Company Ltd. in Clydebank, Dunbartonshire, and was launched by Queen Elizabeth II in 1953.

Prince Charles and Diana, Princess of Wales on board the Royal Yacht Britannia in Gibraltar, at the start of their honeymoon cruise, August 1981. She is wearing a floral silk dress by Donald Campbell.

The Britannia was an aging vessel with nearly five decades worth of nautical mileage. It was in need of expensive repairs and stirred a small debate as to how it would be paid for. In Season 5 of The Crown , Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Phillip are shown vacationing in Scotland aboard the royal yacht. They discussed restoration costs.

During this time, which was also an election year, there were conversations within the Conservative party about replacing the vessel, while the Labour party promised not to use taxpayers' money to renovate the ship within their first two years of government.

"The yacht last underwent a major refit in 1987. A further refit at an estimated cost of some £17 million would be necessary in 1996–1997 but would only prolong her life for a further five years," said Viscount Cranborne, House of Lords Hansard. "In view of her age, even after the refit, she would be difficult to maintain and expensive to run. It has therefore been decided to decommission 'Britannia' in 1997."

When the Labour party won the election in 1997, it was ultimately decided that the ship wouldn't be replaced.

"We made clear that we would not spend public money on a royal yacht, and I am keeping that promise," said George Robertson, Labour's Defence Secretary at the time. "We in the Ministry of Defence have to justify every penny of the taxpayers' money that we spend, and in this case, I could not do so."

The Britannia retired on Dec. 11, 1997. Today it sits at the Ocean Terminal, Leith, in Edinburgh, Scotland. Queen Elizabeth II was even reported to have wept during the decommissioning ceremony. The Britannia is open to the public and has more than 300,000 visitors each year to keep her company.

Living my best ‘The Crown’ life onboard the @britanniayacht . pic.twitter.com/ppO1GcyA7j — Morag (@MoragForbes) January 21, 2023

Those who are interested in getting a first-hand experience at what it was like to travel in luxury some decades ago can visit the Royal Yacht Britannia museum for a small fee. Entrance fees start at £18.50 (about $23) for adults and £9.25 (about $11) for children between the ages of 5 and 17. During the tour, you can expect to see the following:

Britannia's five decks
Visit the bridge
Walk through the Queen's favorite room
Tour the engine room
Enjoy a light lunch in the Royal Deck Tea Room

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What Happened to the Royal Yacht Britannia?

By Elise Taylor

The Crown season five begins and ends with the same plot point: The Royal Yacht Britannia. The vessel serves as a—fairly obvious—metaphor in the first episode, where Imelda Staunton’s Queen Elizabeth describes it as “a floating, seagoing version of me.” The problem with her metaphorical marine self? It’s in desperate need of multi-million dollar repairs.

The Crown is known for taking much of its plot material from real-life events. In the case of the Royal Yacht Britannia, though—what really happened to the boat, and how much political controversy did it really cause?

To go back to the beginning, King George VI first commissioned the royal yacht that would become the Britannia in 1952. It was an exciting project, as the previous official boat had belonged to Queen Victoria, and was rarely used. (Queen Victoria, for one, did not like the water and never sailed.) Then, during the early 20th century, England was mostly at war, and making a massive, slow-sailing luxury ship would be a massive security risk in international waters.

The Royal Yacht Britannia, George decided, should both be an extravagant vessel and a functional one, able to double as a hospital if times of war were to arise again. In 1953, the newly-crowned Queen Elizabeth christened the ship with a bottle of wine, as champagne was still seen as too extravagant post-war. In 1954, she set sail for the first time.

The Royal Yacht fulfilled many functions, most of them leisurely. Over the years, the boat hosted four royal honeymoons, including that of Princess Diana and Prince Charles, as well as many family vacations. In 1969, after his investiture as the Prince of Wales, Charles hosted an intimate party on board to celebrate. (Newspapers at the time wrote that he danced with his dear friend Lucia Santa Cruz —the very person who eventually introduced him to Camilla Parker Bowles.)

It also served as a grandiose mode of transport for many royal visits. In 1959, for example, Britannia sailed to Chicago to celebrate the recently-opened St. Lawrence seaway in Canada, and President Eisenhower joined her on board. Twenty years later, she sailed to Abu Dhabi for her first official visit to the United Arab Emirates, where she held a grand dinner for Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan.

The New York Times once described the 412-foot Britannia as “an ordinary yacht what Buckingham Palace is to the house next door.” It wasn’t an exaggeration—Britannia was essentially a floating palace. It had a drawing room, a dining room, two sitting rooms, as well as galleys and cabins for all the officers. The stateroom interiors were just as ornate as any other royal estate, while the bedrooms—which all had their own bathrooms and dressing rooms—were designed to feel surprisingly personal.

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“Within the royal apartments, however, the regal elegance gives way to the homey, patched elbow chic of an English country house, with flowered chintz slipcovers, family photographs, and rattan settees, interspersed with the occasional relic of Empire—shark's teeth from the Solomon Islands here, a golden urn commemorating Nelson's victory at Trafalgar there,” the New York Times found when it boarded the ship in 1976.

The cost of running Britannia was always an issue. Politicians raised questions about its financial value as far back as 1954, when two MPs lobbied for an investigation on why the yacht’s refurbishment would cost 5.8 million pounds, accusing the royal family of waste and extravagance. A government committee later dismissed the accusations. In 1994, the Conservative government ruled the yacht too costly to refurbish, when repairs came in at a whopping 17 million, but then briefly walked back on their decision a few years later.

However, when Tony Blair’s Labour government won the election, and the new government once again declined to pay for Britannia. Britannia’s final journey was to far-flung Hong Kong in 1997, as Prince Charles turned over the British colony back to the Chinese at the end of Britain's 99-year lease. When they finally decommissioned the boat that summer, the queen cried—one of the few times she’s shown emotion in public. The boat had logged over one million nautical miles.

Today, Britannia sits permanently docked in Edinburgh. Visitors can take tours of its grand galleys, or even rent it out for events. Yet, despite its retirement, the concept of the royal yacht lives on: In 2021, Boris Johnson floated the idea of a new boat. However, a mere eight days ago, Rishi Sunak has scrapped the project—showing that, even now, the concept remains a controversial one.

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The Royal Yacht Britannia Has a Fascinating History—Here's Everything You Should Know

It doesn't get more majestic than Queen Elizabeth II's yacht.

Seventy years ago, the Britannia began its journey as the royal yacht for Queen Elizabeth II and the Royal Family of the United Kingdom. Over the next 44 years she’d travel more than a million nautical miles and, in all her glamour and old world elegance, served as a residence that welcomed state visits from all over the world and family holidays alike. Then and now, she was and is a majestic symbol of the British Commonwealth and the reign of Queen Elizabeth II .

“Britannia is special for a number of reasons,” Prince Phillip once said. “Almost every previous sovereign has been responsible for building a church, a castle, a palace or just a house. The only comparable structure in the present reign is Britannia. As such she is a splendid example of contemporary British design and technology.”

Although she retired from service in 1997, today the Britannia, one of many of the world's grandest yachts , is docked in Edinburgh, where she is open as a visitors’ attraction and host of private events. Below we give you all the Royal Yacht Britannia facts you might want to know, from who owns the yacht now to why she was decommissioned to how fast she is to how to get tickets to visit. Britannia was, after all, the one place the queen said she could “truly relax,” so why not see why for yourself?

Royal Yacht Britania Facts and History

On February 4, 1952, John Brown & Co shipyard in Clydebank, Scotland, received the order from the Admiralty to build a new Royal Yacht to travel the globe and double as a hospital ship in times of war, according to the royal yacht's website . King George VI passed away two days after, sadly, and so on April 16, 1953, the newly crowned Queen Elizabeth II announced the yacht’s new name as the ship was revealed.

"I name this ship Britannia,” she said. “I wish success to her and all who sail in her." Britannia was commissioned into the Royal Navy in January 1954 and by April of that year sailed into her first overseas port: Grand Harbour, Malta.

The queen and The Duke of Edinburgh worked with interior designer Sir Hugh Casson for the ship to serve as both a functional Royal Navy vessel and an elegant royal residence. Queen Elizabeth II selected deep blue for Britannia’s hull, instead of the more traditional black. Its Naval crew included 220 Yachtsmen, 20 officers, and three season officers—plus a Royal Marines Band of 26 men during Royal Tours.

All of them might have had to change uniform up to six times a day, so the laundry service on board worked nonstop. The yacht also engaged in British overseas trade missions known as Sea Days and made an estimated £3 billion for the Exchequer between 1991 and 1995 alone.

royal yacht britannia facts drawing room

The ship’s wheel was taken from King Edward VII’s racing yacht, also named Britannia, according to Boat International , and the 126-meter ship could reach speeds of 22.75 knots, or a seagoing cruising speed of 21 knots, according to Super Yacht Times . Other fun facts: The yacht could produce her own fresh water from sea water, and shouting was forbidden aboard to preserve tranquility, favoring hand signals for Naval orders instead.

Over the next 44 years, the Britannia would sail the equivalent of once around the world for each year, in total visiting 600 ports in 135 countries. Princess Margaret and Anthony Armstrong-Jones were the first of four couples to honeymoon on the ship in 1960, gifting them all privacy to sail to secluded locations. Prince Charles and Princess Diana followed in 1981 on the Mediterranean as well as Princess Anne and Captain Mark Phillips before them in 1973 in the Caribbean and Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson in 1986 in the Azores.

For family vacations aboard the ship, games, treasure hunts, plays, and picnics were organized, and on warm days the children could play in an inflatable paddling pool on the Verandah Deck.

In the Sun Lounge, the queen especially enjoyed taking breakfast and afternoon tea with views through large picture windows, a space you can see replicated in the TV show The Crown. Although no filming took place on board the Britannia for the show, researchers ensured scenes aboard it were accurate. In the queen’s bedroom, the resemblance is seen down to the decorative wall light fittings and embroidered silk panel above her bed that had been specially commissioned.

In 1997, the ship was decommissioned after the government decided the costs to refit it would be too great. On its final day in her service that followed a farewell tour around the U.K., the queen openly wept as the Band of HM Royal Marines played "Highland Cathedral."

"Looking back over 44 years we can all reflect with pride and gratitude upon this great ship which has served the country, the Royal Navy and my family with such distinction," Queen Elizabeth II said. All clocks on the ship stopped at 15:01, the exact time the Queen disembarked from the yacht for the final time, and they would remain at that time until the present.

How to Tour the Royal Yacht Britania

Today the yacht is owned by Royal Yacht Britannia Trus t, and all revenue it generates goes to the yacht’s maintenance and preservation. Ticketed entry allows you to step into state rooms like the Sun Lounge, the State Dining Room and State Drawing Room, in addition to the working side of the ship in the Crew’s Quarters, Laundry and gleaming Engine Room. Along the way you will see original artifacts from the shop—95 percent of which is on loan from The Royal Collection.

How to Visit the Royal Britania

You can visit the Britannia any day of the year on Edinburgh’s waterfront. Hours vary by season, and you can find them listed and purchase tickets on the yacht’s website . Private tours are also available, and you can visit the Royal Deck Tearoom, where the Royal Family hosted cocktail parties and receptions, for drinks, meals and scones. Additionally, the Britannia hosts special ticketed events for New Year’s and other occasions, and event spaces can be booked as well.

While you are in Edinburgh, you can also stay on the Fingal , a neighboring yacht-turned-floating-hotel, which is a seven-minute walk from the Britannia, and dine at its Lighthouse Restaurant & Bar, which serves breakfast, afternoon tea, dinner, and cocktails.

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Moscow, a Newspaper City

By David Remnick

At his dacha in the woods outside Moscow, Mikhail Gorbachev climbed into the back seat of a Zil limousine and headed north, toward the Kremlin. It was the morning after Christmas, and suddenly the Soviet Union was a half-remembered dream and its last general secretary a pensioner. Gorbachev wanted to take care of some final meetings and clean out his desk before starting a few weeks of vacation. The Russian government had promised him a peaceful day or two before it took up residence in the Kremlin. But when he arrived at his office he saw that his nameplate had already been pried off the wall. “Yeltsin, Boris Nikolaevich” was there, gleaming brassily, in its place. Inside the office, Yeltsin was sitting behind the desk. For days, there had been an air of self-pity about Gorbachev, and this petty incident seemed to transform it into fury. Never mind Gorbachev’s own assaults on Yeltsin over the years. “For me, they have poisoned the air,” he complained to a reporter. “They have humiliated me.”

This was a historic moment in Moscow: for the first time, an elected President occupying the Kremlin; the hammer and sickle gone from the flagpole; the regime and the empire dissolved. And yet history felt like nothing more than a miserable winter day; the Western press corps roamed Red Square in search of passion or comment. “You care, we don’t,” an old woman from the provincial city of Tver told a clutch of reporters. With that, she stormed off in search of potatoes and milk for her family.

In the afternoon, Gorbachev’s press secretary, Andrei Grachev, invited a small group of aides, foreign reporters, and Russian editors to a reception at the Oktyabrskaya Hotel. A farewell party, Grachev called it, and he could not have chosen a more appropriate stage. For years, the hotel, across the street from the French Embassy, was a symbol of the Communist Party’s kitschy opulence. The lobby and the dining rooms are heavy on marble and mirrors. Every fixture, it seems, was designed with a certain solicitude for the aging members of the Central Committee—feudal lords of the provinces—who would visit Moscow a few times a year for their plenary sessions and shopping sprees. The Communist Party discovered in its dying days that its financial situation had declined dramatically, and that the only solution was the quick sale of its assets. The Oktyabrskaya Hotel, once known to Muscovites as the Waldorf-Astoria of the Central Committee, is now open for the high-end tourist trade.

At a few minutes before five o’clock, the reporters and the editors stood waiting at the top of the marble stairs for Gorbachev to arrive. By chance, I took my place near two of the city’s best-known newspaper editors: Len Karpinsky, the editor-in-chief and a columnist of the weekly Moscow News ; and Vitaly Tretyakov, a young defector from Moscow News , who had started Nezavisimaya Gazeta ( Independent Newspaper ), the closest thing Russia has ever had to a Western daily. Standing there, I was struck by the fact that Gorbachev’s resignation meant a transition from Karpinsky’s generation of intellectual idealists to a breed of younger men and women like Tretyakov—business neophytes, scholars, hustlers, newspaper editors—who would build a new world not so much out of the jagged ruins of the old experiment as out of fragmentary notions gathered from the West.

Karpinsky is what Muscovites call a shestidesyatnik —someone who came of age in the early nineteen-sixties, during the exhilarating thaw under Nikita Khrushchev, and grew disillusioned when Soviet tanks crushed the Prague Spring, in 1968. That generation harbored the dream of a humane socialism in Russia. Its members did not dare take the risks of full-blown dissidence but found a measure of independence and sanity in their work. There were scholars who fled the oppressive scrutiny of Moscow for institutes in provincial cities from Tartu to Novosibirsk; there were journalists who fled Pravda for Prague and wrote for Problems of Peace and Socialism . Some shestidesyatniki even found it possible to work and think in small, relatively liberal pockets of the Communist Party apparatus in Moscow. Karpinsky first met Gorbachev thirty years ago, when both were prominent in the Komsomol, the Young Communist League. Shared hints of dissatisfaction, of irony, made them comrades of a sort. But Karpinsky was both ambitious and angry, and he had long since veered into the dangerous terrain of what he always called “my life as a half-dissident.” Gorbachev’s appearance as a leader of reform, in 1985, was what Karpinsky had been waiting for all his adult life. Under Gorbachev, Karpinsky went from disgrace to rehabilitation, then on to real stardom in the new world of journalism. When Gorbachev, in the last months of his rule, made serious miscalculations and proved unable to act decisively against the hard-liners who eventually placed him under house arrest for three days in the Crimea, Karpinsky quit the Party and put his hopes in Yeltsin. Yet that conversion, after the assault on Lithuania, in January of 1991—a conversion nearly unanimous among the Moscow intellectuals of Karpinsky’s age and background—was a kind of afterword, a coda to the failed dream of perestroika . Now, as Gorbachev was leaving center stage, so was Karpinsky. Moscow News , which had broken one taboo after another in the first years of perestroika , had become a tired paper: still interesting at times, still honest, but one that spoke to a generation that now seemed, with Gorbachev, exhausted.

“It’s good that Gorbachev’s leaving now, but I am moved to the core,” Karpinsky told me. “How can I deny that I have just finished the most important chapter of my life?”

That day in Moscow, Vitaly Tretyakov was thirty-nine years old—a quarter of a century younger than Karpinsky. In just one year, Tretyakov had developed a paper totally alien to what had been the Soviet Union. From its first issue, in December of 1990, Nezavisimaya Gazeta had never known government interference or censorship, and its language was free of ideology. The first issue appeared just as Eduard Shevardnadze resigned as Foreign Minister and made his uncanny prediction of an incipient dictatorship. The paper’s coverage of the rise of the hard-line counter-revolution and the August coup was unmatched. Nezavisimaya Gazeta ’s combination of news, conflicting commentaries, highbrow essays, and satire made Moscow News seem hopelessly earnest and a little antique. While the pages of Moscow News were filled with the avuncular columns and the hand-wringing of old and worn-out men, reporters in their twenties at Nezavisimaya Gazeta were filching Party documents, printing the confessions of military spies, and conducting irreverent interviews with government leaders. Tretyakov gave free rein to people like Tatyana Malkina, who is twenty-four years old and once worked as a researcher at Moscow News . At a news conference held by the eight conspirators during the August coup, Malkina asked the most penetrating question of the hour. Fixing her eyes on the half-drunk pretender to power, Gennadi Yanayev, she said, “Tell me, please, do you realize that you have carried out a state coup? And which comparison would you find more appropriate—1917 or 1964?” Yanayev’s hand began to quiver uncontrollably as he careered through his reply.

“I’m supposed to be young, but sometimes I feel a hundred years old when I watch what my reporters dare to do,” Tretyakov told me later. “They are the first generation that knows no fear. Journalism is not a mission for them, as it was for us at Moscow News . It’s a terrific game.”

It was now five o’clock, and everyone at the top of the stairs was looking down, to see if Gorbachev would appear. Then the front doors opened and a few of Gorbachev’s closest advisers walked through—owlish little men in mouse-gray overcoats, among them Aleksandr Yakovlev, Georgi Shakhnazarov, and Anatoly Chernyaev. These were the bookish apparatchiks who had warned Gorbachev of the enemies in their midst, and had failed, ultimately, to penetrate their man’s gigantic, and tragic, self-possession. Just behind them was Gorbachev, wearing a coat the color of smoke. He looked up at the crowd and seemed embarrassed; there was something feeble in his smile. For years, he had played the press corps so easily. At first, it was enough that he was ambulatory and reasonably fluent in his own language—that he was not Brezhnev or Chernenko—but with time it was clear as well that he had an apparently effortless ability to connect, to seem to recognize a face in a crowd. And he had the gifts of surprise and agility. Now, at the end, if he was going to remain a force in politics and become Yeltsin’s moderate opposition he would want to give a decent performance at this reception. As Gorbachev shed his coat and began climbing the stairs, the reporters and the photographers began applauding; the applause was hesitant at first, but then it grew louder, and the sound reverberated from the marble and the high windows. Gorbachev clasped his hands together and shook them, more relieved than triumphant.

In a reception room, near tables covered with huge platters of smoked fish and roasted meats, Gorbachev gave a wheezy little speech, made all the worse by a horrendous public-address system. His clichés about the great missions of the past few years came out like the muffled, echoing announcements at a bowling alley. His aides looked bored and weary. But then, with that ritual over, Gorbachev threw himself into the event with gusto. He polished off a shot of lemon vodka and a slice of pickled herring, dangling the herring between forefinger and thumb and dropping it onto his tongue. In a voice of tricked-up cheer, he held his glass up to the guests and the cameras and said, “You think I can’t do it, but now I can afford to.” As Gorbachev worked the room, moving from one cluster of questioners to another, he made it clear that he had no intention of fading away. “I have big plans,” he said. “I am not leaving the political scene.” The later it got, the more pointed his gibes about his successors became. “I just could not go on,” he said. “Everything I did in the last few months, Yeltsin was always opposing. There was just no way. No way. It’s easy to be against Gorbachev, always against Gorbachev all the time. They have always been in opposition. So now I’m gone. There’s no one for them to oppose. So now let them do what they can.”

The transition in Russia these past few months has been far more profound than the turn from Gorbachev to Yeltsin. Genuine democracy is only now in the making, and economic reform remains a distant hope. So far, the great change in Russia has been one of mind and attitude.

The regime knew that it could not modernize without entering the age of information. And it was information—the truth about Soviet history and the failure of ideology—that brought an end to the regime. In the first years of perestroika , the intellectual, spiritual, and journalistic leaders of that change of mind were the shestidesyatniki —men and women like Karpinsky, idealists who suddenly provided an open, civil discourse where there had been none. In the past year, these people have given way to the new generation, less encumbered by the past or by self-doubt, more hardheaded, cynical, practical. Its members are businessmen who travel to Europe for weekend meetings; young academics specializing in the works of Hayek, Mill, and Burke; journalists who find their models in American investigative reporters and, not infrequently, the New York Post . The transition in journalism from Moscow News to Nezavisimaya Gazeta was perhaps the quickest and most visible of these shifts. To witness Len Karpinsky’s transformations—in print and in person—over the Party, socialism, and Gorbachev, and then to confront an army of kids, untroubled by the murk of ideology or by the censor’s pen, was to get a sense of the transition of Russian generations which is now in play.

Len Karpinsky’s parents were Old Bolsheviks. He was named in honor of his father’s mentor and friend Lenin. “ ‘Len’ was pretty common then, and so was ‘Ninel’—‘Lenin’ backward—or ‘Vladilen,’ for Vladimir Ilyich Lenin,” Karpinsky told me at his office one afternoon. “I’m just glad I didn’t get a name like ‘Elektrifikatsiya’ or some others my friends were stuck with.”

Karpinsky’s father, Vyacheslav Karpinsky, belonged to a generation of revolutionary romantics, the fin-de-siècle Communists. He joined the Communist Party in 1898, and in 1903, after his activities as a political organizer got him into trouble with the police in the Ukrainian city of Kharkov, he went into foreign exile, according to an interview that was published in “Voices of Glasnost,” by Stephen F. Cohen and Katrina vanden Heuvel. In Switzerland, he became Lenin’s aide and copy editor. In Moscow, after the revolution, he helped Lenin assemble his personal archives and held various posts at Pravda and the Central Committee’s Department of Propaganda. He received three Orders of Lenin, and in 1962 became the first journalist ever named a Hero of Socialist Labor.

For the Karpinsky family, a life in revolution provided an elevated existence. From 1932 to 1952, they lived in the famous House on the Embankment—a huge pile across the river from the Kremlin. Other tenants were the Kremlin élite: generals, Central Committee members, agents of the secret police. There were special dining halls stocked with groceries of a sort unknown to the rest of the socialist paradise. There were billiard halls, swimming pools, and, for the children, Special School No. 19. When Len Karpinsky was a boy, he was friendly with a couple of Stalin’s nephews. At a birthday party once, Stalin appeared in a doorway. “Children!” one of the adults announced. “Joseph Vissarionovich is here!” Stalin waved and smiled. The children all waited in silence until he left, and then resumed their games.

That was in 1935. In the coming years, Karpinsky watched dumbstruck as one after another of his friends in the building lost parents, aunts, uncles, and grandparents to Stalin’s purges. Nearly every night, secret-police vans would arrive and there would be arrests—an admiral, a lecturer on Marxism-Leninism, the sisters of a spy in a foreign embassy. “There was a knock and then they disappeared,” Karpinsky said. It had been the world of Yuri Trifonov’s novella “The House on the Embankment”—a world where “a life went on that was utterly different” from the life of ordinary people. Now it was a world where the most devoted revolutionaries, the most obsequious ministers, suddenly found themselves declared “plotters” and “infiltrators” and “enemies of the people.” Karpinsky’s family was, by the standards of the building, not hard hit. One of his aunts and her two brothers were sent off to the camps. To this day, Karpinsky does not quite understand why his father, the very sort of Lenin loyalist who so threatened Stalin, was not arrested and executed. The only reason he can think of now, he says, is that by 1937 or 1938 his father was semi-retired and out of politics.

From the moment I moved to Moscow, in January of 1988, until leaving, four years later, I read Moscow News , and particularly Karpinsky, avidly. Everyone did. The leadership had installed Karpinsky’s old friend Yegor Yakovlev as editor-in-chief of the newspaper in 1986, and almost from that point it was clear that Moscow News would be the paper of the thaw generation, the one that would subtly break the taboos formed over seventy years. From time to time, I visited Karpinsky at the Moscow News office, on Pushkin Square, and he always seemed to me an honest man, if a limited writer—a representative figure, whose life had been, as he remarked to me, “an inner conflict between the ambition to be a boss in the Communist Party and the almost involuntary development of a conscience.” His appearance today, waxen and drawn, speaks of that struggle. His face is long, lined, and worn. The fingers of his right hand are yellowed up to the first knuckle, from tobacco. More often than not, when I called and asked how he was he would say dryly, “My health is awful. I’m spending the week in a sanatorium. I may die.”

Karpinsky is so unassuming, and so ironic about his own failures and hesitations, that it is hard to believe he was once an ambitious Communist, a dutiful apparatchik who believed deeply in Communism and in himself—in his entitlement to success. After entering Moscow State University, in 1947, he began working as a “propaganda man” at factories and construction sites during the days before the Party’s single-candidate elections. “My assignment was to make the workers get up at 6 a.m. and go to the polls,” he told me one afternoon. “There was a competition among the propaganda men over whose group would be the first to finish voting. The deadline was midday, by which time the whole Soviet people was supposed to have voted. That was a decision of the Party. We eighteen-year-olds were supposed to carry on propaganda among the workers, and our only tool was the promise to improve their housing conditions. They lived in horrible slums, or in railway cars, with no toilets, no heat. I loved the work, thought it was a great service—and, yes, a stepping stone. At the university, Yuri Levada, who is now a well-known sociologist, wrote an article about me called ‘The Careerist.’ And it was true. I did it all with the idea of getting to the top. That was what it was all about—to be one of the bosses.”

After a pause, Karpinsky ground out a cigarette and went on, “But, having said that, I have to say a few words in self-defense. Society during the Stalin era left open no real opportunities for self-realization or self-expression except within this perverted system of the Communist Party. The system destroyed all the other channels—the artist’s canvas, the farmer’s land. All that was left was the gigantic hierarchic system of the Party, wide at the base and growing narrower as one climbed to the top. You had to have a Party membership just for admission. That was your only opportunity. When you are engaged in that work, you forget about the social and political implications and just do it. Gradually, though, this sort of life bifurcates your mind, your intellect. You do eventually begin to understand that life is life and it’s better to do something good for thy neighbor than to climb upward stepping on his bones. It all depends on moral principles. I suppose my first doubts came when I went to Moscow State University. A Jewish friend of mine named Karl Kantor was attacked by the university’s Party committee at the beginning of Stalin’s anti-Jewish campaign. That was just the start of a long transformation.

“After graduation, I was sent to the city of Gorki for Komsomol work. At that point, Stalin had one more year to live. I got to know the working class and the peasants in Gorki. I saw the utter degradation, the ruin. I saw Soviet society as it had really emerged. Some people still think, erroneously, that the life of the apparatchik breeds only conformists and subjects loyal to the regime. Actually, the regime splits people into two opposing factions—those who believe they can make it only through conformism and timeserving, and those who, thanks to a different structure of mind, dare to question the surrounding reality.”

He paused again, and then said, “So when Stalin died I realized perfectly well what he had been all about. Still, I went to the funeral in Moscow, out of curiosity. I felt like one of those prisoners in the camps who threw their hats in the air and cried, ‘The man-eater has finally kicked the bucket!’ My father’s reaction to Stalin’s death was interesting. By then, he was retired, working for the Central Committee only as a consultant. He sat there in his office, typing on an old Underwood, which he had brought from the offices he shared with Lenin in Switzerland. He called me into his study and said, ‘Son, Comrade Stalin has passed away. And, having been an epigone of Lenin, he created all the necessary conditions for our cause to triumph.’ It was so strange. My father had never before in his life talked so formally to me. I think he talked that way because his generation had always carried the burden of promoting the Party line at all times, and he felt that it was his duty to pass that down to his children. But this was a man, eighty years old, who had conceived his idea of the Party before the revolution and while living in exile. He had to convince not me but himself. He was talking to himself.”

When Karpinsky returned from Gorki to Moscow for good, in 1959, Khrushchev was the general secretary, and the thaw was in full swing. Novy Mir , Aleksandr Tvardovsky’s monthly journal of literature and opinion, was publishing texts critical of the old regime. Khrushchev himself read Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich,” and sanctioned its publication in Novy Mir . Karpinsky’s friends Yevgeny Yevtushenko and Andrei Voznesensky were winning a following with their foppish lyrics and performances. In various pockets of the Central Committee apparatus, young apparatchiks wrote proposals and outlines of economic and political reform—though all within certain boundaries of ideology and language. Karpinsky, for his part, worked as the head of the Komsomol’s Department of Propaganda and Agitation and as the editor of Molodoi Kommunist ( Young Communist ). Then, in 1962, he joined the empyrean of the adult Communist world. He was promoted to Pravda ’s editorial board, to head the department of Marxism-Leninism. He had made it.

“Once I was back in Moscow from Gorki, my critical approach weakened somewhat,” Karpinsky said. “I was part of the élite again, and not merely as my father’s son but as a real member. I was part of the top nomenklatura , and the nomenklatura is another planet. It’s Mars. It’s not simply a matter of good cars or apartments. It’s the continuous satisfaction of your own exclusivity; it’s the way an army of bootlickers allows you to work for hours. All the little apparatchiks are ready to do everything for you. Your every wish is fulfilled. You can go to the theatre on a whim, you can fly to Japan from your hunting lodge. It’s a life in which everything flows easily. No, you don’t own a yacht or spend your vacations on the Côte d’Azur, but you are at the Black Sea, and that is really something. The issue is your relative well-being. You are like a king: just point your finger and it is done.”

Karpinsky’s potential as a man of the Communist Party élite was unlimited. It is conceivable that he could have won eventual appointment to the Politburo. He was a Soviet Ivy Leaguer: bright, ambitious, a Legacy. One afternoon, at a Kremlin ceremony, two of Khrushchev’s most powerful partners in the leadership, Mikhail Suslov and Boris Ponomarev, called Karpinsky their golden boy, their comer. One of them said that Karpinsky was like “a son of the regiment” to them, and that they saw for him a great future in the ideological department of the Communist Party. “We are pinning our hopes on you,” Suslov said.

Working in that rarefied atmosphere, Karpinsky got to know nearly every figure who would make a difference (one way or the other) during perestroika . He was friendly with Yegor Yakovlev, the Lenin biographer, who became the editor of Moscow News ; Yuri Karyakin, a Dostoyevski scholar, who was among the leading radical deputies in the Congress of People’s Deputies; Aleksandr Bovin, the gargantuan journalist who propagandized the “new thinking” in foreign policy at Izvestia ; the reform-minded economists Gavriil Popov and Nikolai Shmelyov and the sociologist Yevgeny Ambartsumov; Otto Latsis, the son of an Old Bolshevik and an editor at Kommunist ; Gennadi Yanayev and Boris Pugo, who helped lead the August coup; and even the leading triumvirate of reform, Eduard Shevardnadze, Aleksandr Yakovlev, and Mikhail Gorbachev.

“I first met Gorbachev when I was working at Pravda and he was in Stavropol working in the Komsomol organization there,” Karpinsky said. “He was not very well known at the time, but I must tell you that Gorbachev was saying the same things then that he said at the beginning of perestroika . He was in Moscow on some business trip or other—I forget what it was about—but we met for a couple of hours, and I was impressed. He talked about the outrage of paying combine operators by their mileage, and not by their output. To put it in a nutshell, he spoke about the absurd system of incentives, or lack of them, in the economy. He was excitable but somehow very rational. And for the first two or three years of perestroika Gorbachev was the same sort of innovator he had been when he was young. The innovative projects were always limited, within certain boundaries, and that, of course, was significant later on. Well, I understand him. Like all of us, Gorbachev had to have a dual nature. It was in his mind, in his soul. He knew well that the idea of reward for work well done was considered out of the ordinary but not quite heretical. You could experiment with something limited like that. But we were not allowed to make any political or philosophical conclusions suggesting that the system itself was a failure. In your mind, you avoided such conclusions. You were simply incapable of thinking that way. To think that way was not only career suicide but a form of despair. And so, like the rest of us, Gorbachev hedged—outwardly and within himself.”

Karpinsky and his friends were at first not much upset by Brezhnev and Suslov’s overthrow of Khrushchev, in 1964. When Karpinsky heard the news, he and Yegor Yakovlev celebrated over a bottle of cognac. Khrushchev had long since tightened restrictions on the press and the arts, and had become prone to unpredictable decisions—a manic “voluntarism,” as the Party language had it. Only years later, when Khrushchev was a sad old man living in exile at his dacha, did Karpinsky call him, to wish him well on his birthday. Karpinsky said that he was calling on behalf of “the children of the Twentieth Party Congress,” and that Khrushchev should know that one day history would make clear to everyone the importance of that session, in 1956, at which he levelled his first attacks against Stalin’s “cult of personality.”

“I have always believed this, and I am very pleased that you and your relatively young generation understand the essence of the Twentieth Congress and the policies I initiated,” Khrushchev replied. “I am so happy to hear from you in my twilight years.”

It did not take Karpinsky or anyone else long to realize that Brezhnev had no intention of making reforms. Just the opposite. A neo-Stalinist movement was in the works. One night at dinner with Yevtushenko and Otto Latsis, Karpinsky began to speak out about what was happening to his generation, to its cast of mind. “Our idea was this: when one has an education in philosophy and a certain intellectual background, one begins to understand the inner properties of reality—something I termed intellectual conscience,” he told me. “It’s not a natural, inborn conscience but a conscience that stems from a kind of thinking that links you with a moral attitude toward reality. If you understand that everything in this society is soaked in blood, that the society itself is heading toward collapse, that it is all an anti-human system—if you understand this instinctively and intellectually—then your conscience cannot remain neutral. Look, I never really took any risks, and didn’t want to. I was sort of compelled by my conscience to take what steps I did. And, once compelled to take those steps, I could never foresee the bad consequences. Every time, I thought I’d get away with it. And, every time, I didn’t.”

Karpinsky made his first real foray into the netherworld of “half-dissent” in 1967, and it was a personal disaster. He and a friend at Pravda , Fyodor Burlatsky, wrote an article in Komsomolskaya Pravda calling, in a euphemistic way, for an easing of censorship in the theatre. Karpinsky now says that the piece was “half-rotten,” especially its solipsistic arguments that the best way to eliminate anti-Soviet sentiments from the theatre would be to let the people, and not the official censors, decide. That way, the authors said, the playwrights would have no right to complain about the government, and so would be deprived of a source of anger and subject matter. But the article, “On the Road to the Première,” contained one idea, plainly stated, that caused an uproar when it appeared: the personality cult, Karpinsky and Burlatsky said, had been criticized only lightly, and the censors were preventing anything deeper.

Brezhnev, who had already begun the ideological rehabilitation of Stalin, was furious when his aides brought the piece to his attention. He took the article as a personal attack. By chance, the article had appeared on the same day that a member of the Central Committee criticized the military industry, which had been Brezhnev’s province before he became general secretary. Karpinsky, Burlatsky, and the editor of Komsomolskaya Pravda were fired. Karpinsky was quickly appointed to a job at Izvestia , but after he made a few critical remarks at a meeting of that paper’s Communist Party committee he was eased out of there, too.

Despite his inherited romantic view of Bolshevism and his own pleasure in the perquisites of power, Karpinsky could no longer hide his disaffection. The invasion of Czechoslovakia, in August of 1968, was for Karpinsky and many of his friends a breaking point. He did not join the seven young protesters who went to Red Square with banners and were arrested and sent to prison or a psychiatric hospital or into exile. Nor did he form any links with Andrei Sakharov or other leading intellectuals who had decided, once and for all, to give up their lives in the hierarchy for the dangers of political dissidence. But he did act. Under the pen name L. Okunev, Karpinsky wrote a long article called “Words Are Also Deeds,” for circulation only among a select group of friends and would-be reformers within the world of the Party and its official academies. (The article was published abroad in 1982 in Stephen F. Cohen’s book “An End to Silence.”) The pseudonym was an inside joke: “Karpinsky” derives from “carp,” and “Okunev” from “perch.” In the article Karpinsky argued that free thought—and not “rows of armed soldiers, insurgent crowds, columns of revolutionary sailors, or a volley from the cruiser Aurora”—would one day challenge the Soviet system. Furthermore, the state structures and ideological machinery would not be able to resist, for the system “lacks any serious social basis. It cannot convince anyone of its fertility and hangs on only by the instinct of self-preservation,” he wrote. “The farce of neo-Stalinism we are passing through is just the outward expression of the ‘uneasy forebodings’ the petty tyrants feel. They long for the old regime, the ‘Stalin fortress,’ but they find only decrepit foundations, too weak to support such a structure.”

The article, like nearly all of Karpinsky’s writings, is clogged with indirection and filler, great clots of the undigested verbiage of the typical Party apparatchik. It was, however, remarkable not only for its moments of clarity and daring but also for its prescience. Here was an apparatchik (“We are pinning our hopes on you,” Suslov had said) who now believed no more in the viability of the Bolshevik state than did Berdyaev, Sakharov, Amalrik, or Solzhenitsyn.

“Our tanks in Prague were, if you will, an anachronism, an ‘inadequate’ weapon,” Karpinsky wrote. “They ‘fired’ at—ideas. With no hope of hitting the target. They ‘dealt with’ the Czechoslovak situation the same way that at one time certain reptiles ‘dealt with’ the coming of the age of mammals. The reptiles bit at the air, gnashing their teeth in the same ether that was literally seething with the plankton of renewal. At the same time, fettered by their natural instincts, they searched for ‘hidden stocks of weapons’ and diligently occupied the postal and telegraph offices. With a fist to the jaw of thinking society, they thought they had knocked out and ‘captured’ its thinking processes.”

Karpinsky also provided an insider’s view, identifying within the monolith of the Party structure “a layer of Party intellectuals.” He went on to say, “To be sure, this layer is thin and disconnected; it is constantly eroded by coöptation and promotion, and is thickly interlaced with careerists, flatterers, loudmouths, jesuits, cowards, and other products of the bureaucratic selection process. But this layer could move toward an alliance with the entire social body of the intelligentsia if favorable conditions arose. This layer is already an arm of the intelligentsia, its ‘parliamentary faction’ within the administrative structure. This faction will inevitably grow, constituting a hidden opposition, without specific shape and not aware of itself, but an actually existing and widely ramified opposition at all levels within the administrative chain.”

And that is precisely what happened between 1985 and 1988. The dissidents were the bravest and most clear-minded of all, but in the early Gorbachev years they did not provide, in numbers or in force, an adequate army. As if from nowhere, intellectuals within the Party, the institutes, the press, and the literary, artistic, and scientific worlds slowly took a Soviet leader at his word that this would be a different age. For once, the purposes of a Kremlin leader and the liberal intelligentsia intersected.

The tragedy was that by the time Gorbachev came to power there were so many broken lives: great minds lost to emigration, drink, suicide, despair, or sheer cynicism. “So many people had been destroyed,” Karpinsky said. “You can maintain that split way of thinking for a while, but then you begin to degenerate and start to speak only what is permitted, and the rest of the conscience and the soul decays. Many people did not survive to perestroika . We had to create an internal moral system, and not everyone could sustain that indefinitely. Solzhenitsyn spoke about this in his essay ‘Live Not by Lies.’ I understood his viewpoint, and we tried not to live by lies, but we couldn’t always manage it. If you ignore the regulations of the state completely, and go into total dissidence, then you can’t have a family: you don’t know where you will get rent money, and your children would have to go into the streets to scrape up a living. To fulfill this principle of not living under a lie in every aspect is just impossible, because you live in a certain time.

“Compared with the people who were not afraid of prison, my friends and I were not heroes. We abstained from direct acts. This position was itself a compromise. But it was the sort of compromise you make when you are in a cage with a lion. It is understandable, though nothing to be proud of. When I myself was in the position of having to say what I felt, I said it. I just didn’t deliberately try to put my head in a noose. I used Aesopian language. I had to use hints about progress—nothing more. What we did publish only hinted at our real thoughts.”

But “Words Are Also Deeds” went far beyond Aesopian language. In 1970, Karpinsky gave a copy of his text to Roy Medvedev, the Marxist historian. A few months later, Medvedev called Karpinsky and told him that the K.G.B. had ransacked his apartment and taken every manuscript in sight, including “Words Are Also Deeds.” For a few years, Karpinsky was oblivious of the trouble he was in. He bounced around from job to job, from a sociology institute to editing Marxist-Leninist works at Progress Publishers. But in 1975, when he was caught working on the manuscript of his friend Otto Latsis’s book “On the Eve of a Great Breakthrough,” an analysis of collectivization and Stalinism, the K.G.B. called him in. Naturally, the interrogator was an old friend: a Komsomol colleague named Filipp Bobkov, who had become one of the most infamous figures in the Soviet secret police. Karpinsky tried to soften up Bobkov. “When you came to me, there was tea and cookies,” he told him. “You don’t even offer me tea. It’s not very polite.” Bobkov was not amused. He passed the damning documents along to the Communist Party Control Committee, and Len Karpinsky, the son of Lenin’s friend and the Party’s great hope, was expelled. Suslov, for one, viewed Karpinsky’s transgressions as a personal betrayal.

Now Karpinsky did whatever he could to make a living—among other things, commissioning paintings and monuments for a state agency, for which he received a minuscule salary. He kept up his friendships, talked politics, and for a while lived at the dacha he had inherited from his father. The moment of reckoning he had written about in “Words Are Also Deeds,” the advent of dissent as a cultural and political fact of life, seemed years off.

Even after Gorbachev took power, in March of 1985, Karpinsky never dreamed that change could happen so quickly. And, at first, it did not. Although the liberals in the Politburo secured the editorship of Moscow News for Karpinsky’s friend Yegor Yakovlev and told him to transform the tourist giveaway sheet into “a tribune of reform,” glasnost was initially a process of hints, insinuations. To read now through a stack of Moscow News issues from 1987 and 1988 is to get lost in a blur of non-language. The barriers were immense at first, the victories almost unbearably difficult. When the editors of Moscow News wanted to print a simple obituary of the writer Viktor Nekrasov, the Politburo itself had to give permission, and did so only after long debate.

“But still the change was tremendous,” Karpinsky said. “The difference between the thaw and glasnost was a difference in temperature. If the temperature under Khrushchev was two degrees above zero Celsius, then glasnost pushed it to twenty above. Huge chunks of ice just melted away, and now we were talking not only about Stalin’s personality cult but also about Leninism, Marxism, the essence of the system. There had been nothing like that under Khrushchev. It had been just a narrow opening, through which only Stalin’s cult could be seen. There had been no real changes. And, as we saw, it could all be reversed. The bureaucracy, the Party, the K.G.B.—all the repressive apparatus in charge of the intelligentsia and the press—were in place.”

For Karpinsky, Moscow News provided the opening to a public hearing and also to a rehabilitation. In March of 1987, he published a long article entitled “It’s Absurd to Hesitate Before an Open Door.” Like his liberal pieces of the past, it was a mixed performance. He made sure to blast the West for what he thought was its phony concern for the Soviet dissidents, but he also made a crucial point that was then getting close consideration within the government: the critique of Stalin begun in 1956 would have to go deeper. Reform without a thorough assessment of the country’s “core” problems, the rottenness of its history and foundations, would be meaningless.

Karpinsky wanted to rejoin the Party, not only as personal vindication but also in order to play a role in what was still the central institution of political power. At a meeting with the chairman of the Party’s Control Committee, however, the hard-liner Mikhail Solomentsev mocked Karpinsky. From a thick stack of papers that had obviously been compiled by the Party and the K.G.B., Solomentsev pulled out a copy of “Words Are Also Deeds,” and, holding it up, he shouted, “You still have not disarmed ideologically! Nothing has changed in our party!” But things had changed. The sharp ideological divisions within the Party had become an open secret, an open struggle, and the trick was to get the support of powerful liberals within the structure. Three old friends of Karpinsky’s—Yuri Afanasyev, Nikolai Shmelyov, and Yuri Karyakin—brought to the Nineteenth Special Party Conference, in June of 1988, a petition demanding his rehabilitation. With the help of his old acquaintances Aleksandr Yakovlev and, amazingly, Boris Pugo, the gambit worked. By the next year, Karpinsky was in the regular rotation as a columnist at Moscow News —a golden boy, he says, “of a certain age.”

In the past few years, Moscow has been a newspaper fanatic’s dream. Karpinsky’s columns and Moscow News are only a part of the morning haul. Having started from nothing, from the jargon of the Communist Party press, Moscow has become the most exciting newspaper city since New York after the Second World War. The thaw was a liberalization dominated by a few works of real literature, but glasnost has been a period of journalism—of investigation, history, sensation, commentary, and scoop. At first, the most obvious mainstays of glasnost were Moscow News and the weekly magazine Ogonyok. But, as glasnost evolved into more genuine freedom for the press, the democratic vista widened. Today, there are the breathless papers that rush to the aid of the Yeltsin cause: the semi-official daily, Rossiiskaya Gazeta , and, with a circulation of twenty million, Komsomolskaya Pravda . Literaturnaya Gazeta prints a blend of high-minded cultural criticism, political analysis, and Yuri Shchekochikhin’s investigative work on the K.G.B. Argumenty i Fakty , with a circulation of more than twenty-five million, is a kind of weekly bulletin board of two-hundred-word articles and factoids. When it ran a poll a couple of years ago revealing Andrei Sakharov’s enormous popularity and Gorbachev’s slump, Gorbachev had a public fit and threatened to fire the editor. (Instead, he fired the hawkish editor of Pravda , Viktor Afanasyev.)

The former government organ Izvestia held a putsch of its own in August, tossing out its apparatchik editor, Nikolai Yefimov, and replacing him with a team that has made Izvestia the daily paper of record: stolid, wealthy, rich with foreign news, humorless. Izvestia ’s series on Moscow’s destruction of Korean Airlines Flight 007 was at least as good as anything on that subject published in the West. For tabloid sensation, there are Top Secret ’s true-crime stories (“Murder on Kutuzovsky Street!”) and Megapolis-Express ’s local muckraking. The puckish Kommersant , edited by Yegor Yakovlev’s son Vladimir, covers the emerging business world, letting young entrepreneurs know which clan rules which district and how to find cheap computers on the black market. In train stations and on street corners, hawkers do a brisk business in Baltic sex papers, mimeographed neo-Bolshevik sheets, and pirated copies of a booklet called “How to Find a Job in America and Europe.” For nostalgia’s sake, it’s still worth reading Pravda as it tries desperately to prove, out of the side of its mouth, that it never really meant what it had been saying for almost a century. Lately, Pravda has become the mouthpiece of a neo-Bolshevik movement, but, like Bolshevism, it may soon go out of business. And for the hard-liners there is Sovietskaya Rossiya , which published the key manifestos leading up to the coup, and Dyen (“The Newspaper of the Spiritual Opposition”), edited by Aleksandr Prokhanov, a theocratic militarist known affectionately as the Nightingale of the General Staff. Among the wire services, the old Big Brother of the ticker, TASS, which is now known as ITAR-TASS, has been neutered and taken over by the Russian government, while Interfax and a few agencies in the other republics have the manic intensity of the Associated Press on a good day. Interfax’s leading reporter, Vyacheslav Terekhov, is a bulldog in a brown suit, pestering politicians and filing dispatches from breakfast until midnight. He scooped the world by several hours last August when he reported that Gorbachev would dissolve the Communist Party.

Until 1988, or 1989 at the latest, Moscow News remained the country’s singular iconoclast, always smashing idols just before the reformers in the leadership did. In any given week, a foreign reporter in the Soviet Union could sit down with a copy of Moscow News and simply rewrite two or three of its revelations to make news at home. The hard-liner Yegor Ligachev called Moscow News an “ersatz” paper, but Gorbachev, Shevardnadze, and Aleksandr Yakovlev obviously felt otherwise. Moscow News was clearly the voice of the liberals in the Politburo. But the lack of real independence at Moscow News , its link to Gorbachev himself, began to work against it in 1990 and 1991. As the country became more diverse, as the liberal intelligentsia’s ideas about the future of society and politics grew far more radical than Gorbachev’s own, Moscow News , under Yegor Yakovlev, began to look a bit timid and almost comically protective of its original patron.

“Without realizing it, Yegor was turning Moscow News into Pravda ,” I was told by Nezavisimaya Gazeta ’s editor, Vitaly Tretyakov, who was Yakovlev’s deputy at the time. “Just as Pravda was the tribune of the old powers, he wanted Moscow News to be the tribune of the new power, the left-of-center position, the Gorbachev position in the Politburo. When I became Yegor’s deputy, I began to see how many visitors and calls there were from the Central Committee, and it was obvious that the paper was not operating independently. Len Karpinsky was much more radical than Yegor, but Moscow News could be only as radical as Yegor would allow it to be. Yegor has the personality of a dictator, and that may be necessary, but he always wanted to be in possession of ultimate truth—he claimed to know all the answers. None of us at Moscow News could take a step without Yegor’s say-so. You couldn’t mention Lenin, for instance, because Yegor thought he knew all there was to know about him. And then there was Gorbachev: we could not criticize him directly. And what could someone like Len do? After all, it was Yegor who pulled Len out of obscurity and got him a job.”

By the summer of 1990, millions of people were quitting the Communist Party. The party that called itself “the initiator of perestroika ”—an appalling bit of self-congratulation, considering the blood on its hands—had lost the power to convince many of its own members that it supported radical change. At Moscow News , Tretyakov proposed that the members of the paper’s Party committee all resign as one. But Yakovlev said no, they should “stay the course.” As usual, Yakovlev had the votes, Karpinsky’s included.

Tretyakov was feeling more alienated by the day from his colleagues at the paper. He was not a man of the Gorbachev generation, and he did not have the Old Bolshevik background and Party connections of so many of the shestidesyatniki . His parents were laborers. Tretyakov had worked for years on some of the glossy propaganda magazines that the government printing organs ground out like sausage meat: Soviet Life , Études Soviétiques , Soviet Woman , and the rest. His time at Moscow News was “a gift,” but, he decided, the time had come to leave. “My idea was to start something new, a better Moscow News ,” Tretyakov said.

After spending a couple of weeks recently at Nezavisimaya Gazeta ’s offices and sitting in on editorial meetings, I realized that Tretyakov had had very little idea of what he wanted when he held his first planning sessions, in the summer of 1990. He knew only that he did not want to tie the editorial direction and the tone of the paper to the fate of Mikhail Gorbachev or any other political personality. At first, he tried to induce some of the best-known writers in Moscow to join him. They all turned him down. No one with a family and an established position was prepared to risk them on an experiment, a notion. Tretyakov’s one essential break came with the election of liberal democrats to Moscow City Hall. The new mayor, Gavriil Popov, and his deputy, Sergei Stankevich, were interested in Tretyakov’s idea, and gave him a start-up loan of three hundred thousand rubles. No strings attached, Popov said. Remarkably, the city officials kept their word. They have never considered the paper their own, and have never interfered in editorial or business policy. “It was just a small investment in the transition to a free press,” Stankevich said.

I had heard about the paper long before its first issue appeared. One summer afternoon two years ago, I drove to the country town of Peredelkino to visit Andrei Karaulov, a young theatre critic, and his wife, Natasha, who is the daughter of the playwright Mikhail Shatrov. Karaulov was a journalist-hustler the like of which I have never seen—at least, not in Moscow. Even in the early days of perestroika , he managed to get interviews with one Politburo member and spymaster after another. He somehow made patently evil and slimy men feel comfortable, then tortured them with a combination of unctuous charm and barbed questions. He even managed to get me in to see Gaidar Aliyev, a member of the Brezhnev circle, who has been described by the Moscow jurist and writer Arkady Vaksberg as “the living definition of the Mafia man.” Karaulov’s knack was so uncanny that some of his rivals moaned that he must have “dark connections.” Another guest at the Peredelkino dacha that afternoon was a man in his early forties named Igor Zakharov. Zakharov turned out to be just about the most cynical man I have ever known, and he seemed to scorn himself most of all. He had worked for years at the Novosti Press agency, editing propaganda magazines with Tretyakov. “I am a born functionary,” he said. “I never believed in anything official—not in Communism and not in the possibility of perestroika . I may have published all that shit, but I never believed it. You know that expression ‘Life is elsewhere’?” But this willingness to work with odious bureaucrats while holding opposing beliefs seemed to arouse less sympathy for him than it did for Karpinsky. It was somehow touching that Karpinsky actually did believe in something when he was young and then believed in something else later on. Zakharov believed in nothing but the hopelessness of almost everything, and the sudden advent of radical changes in the country made his cynicism seem worthless. So when he and Karaulov began telling me about their work with Vitaly Tretyakov on a new newspaper, to be called Nezavisimaya Gazeta , not only did I think it would fail—I also hoped that it would.

I forgot about that discussion and Nezavisimaya Gazeta until six months later, when, in December of 1990, I was on a plane from Riga to Moscow. Eduard Shevardnadze had just resigned, and the Balts suspected that they were about to become the targets of the crackdown that Shevardnadze had been warning about; they were proved tragically correct the following month. On the plane, I borrowed two issues of an unfamiliar broadsheet—the first and second issues of Nezavisimaya Gazeta —and I was startled. The front page of the first issue featured little mug shots of the country’s political leaders, and above the pictures was the headline “They Rule Us: But What Do We Know About Them, the Most Powerful People in Our Country? Almost Nothing.” On page 5 (“Ideas and People”) the historian Yuri Afanasyev published what was surely the year’s most incisive piece of political commentary: “We Are Moving to the Side of Dictatorship.” In details that proved absolutely accurate, Afanasyev described Gorbachev’s “tragedy”—how his own internal and political limitations left him open to the pressures of the hard-line Communists in the regime. It was just the sort of political critique of Gorbachev that Moscow News could not bring itself to publish. Then, on page 8 of the first issue—the back page—was a manifesto by Tretyakov declaring that there had never been “in the history of the Soviet Union” a paper independent of political interests. He would publish one. The second issue led with the headline “Eduard Shevardnadze Leaves. The Military-Industrial Complex Stays. What Choice Will Gorbachev Make?” A few pages later, Karaulov weighed in with a fascinating interview with the No. 2 man at that time in the K.G.B., Filipp Bobkov—the man who had interrogated Len Karpinsky fifteen years earlier.

One day during those first weeks of Nezavisimaya Gazeta ’s life, I went to the paper’s offices with Karaulov. As we walked along the muddy streets near the K.G.B. buildings, he was trying to sell me—literally—some crackpot spy-story documents involving the Bolshoi Theatre. Information is constantly for sale now in Moscow. The Russian prosecutor assigned to investigate the August coup charges at least five hundred dollars for interviews about his work. “Interviews are creative works,” he says. When I refused Karaulov’s “tip” on the Bolshoi and explained Western rules about not paying for information, he seemed alternately bemused and hurt. “Besides, you’d never find the place without me,” he said. “You owe me for that, at least.” He had a point. Nezavisimaya Gazeta ’s offices are tucked away in an obscure courtyard building not far from Lubyanka Square. At the time, the paper shared the building with the Voskhod (Sunrise) printing company. Expansion eventually eased the printers out. The paper originally had twenty people on its staff and appeared three days a week; now it has two hundred and appears five days a week. When I first visited the office, the place was a sea of paper and ironic memorabilia—faded portraits of old Politburo members a specialty. No one looked as if he had slept, showered, or shaved in days.

Rejected by the older newspaper stars, Tretyakov got his journalists wherever he could find them. Most of them had worked at second- or third-tier publications—at movie and theatrical quarterlies, Baltic underground sheets, Komsomol dailies. Some had no journalistic experience at all. They were biologists, secretaries, manual workers, students, diplomats—anything. Whatever skills they did or did not have, they had a unanimous contempt for all things sovok —a slang term for “Soviet.” (The staff’s favorite early fan letter read “Congratulations: You are neither pro-Soviet nor anti-Soviet. You are simply non-Soviet.”) All were young, and they did not bother to struggle with the questions of their elders. The ideological ruminations of a man like Len Karpinsky were for these people irrelevant and just a little bit sad.

Mikhail Leontiev, the paper’s economics editor, who was thirty-three years old, was a typical new employee. He had studied economics at the Plekhanov Institute, in Moscow, but to avoid doing “idiot work for the regime” he quit the academic world and worked for years restoring old furniture. He hardly ever wrote then, he told me. “Why bother?” He did write one prescient essay for a Latvian paper in 1989; called “The New Consensus,” it dealt with the growing front of Fascists, nationalists, and military leaders. “That was about all I could do,” Leontiev later told me between meetings at Nezavisimaya Gazeta . “I just couldn’t work for any of the old papers. Coming here, discovering Nezavisimaya Gazeta , was a revelation—the revelation we were all waiting for. The coverage of economics in our paper starts from the principle that we don’t need to tear our hair out about whether Marxism-Leninism or capitalism is the right way to go. That debate is as dead as can be. Do we really have to go crazy over whether it is good to find a healthy balance between efficiency and social welfare? About whether the rules of the market are ultimately correct? I don’t think so. I don’t cover Communism or any other religion in these pages. That’s not my business.”

The darkening political mood in the winter of 1990-91, the ominous sense that the Army, the K.G.B., and the Communist Party were now forming an open alliance against a radical reform of the country, gave the paper a clear sense of purpose. To Muscovites reading Nezavisimaya Gazeta in its first month of publication the new paper conveyed an understanding of and a foreboding about the political earthquake to come. Not so Moscow News , which still kept its reports within certain bounds. Moscow News was now responding not to censors—they had been either removed or rendered completely benign—but, rather, to an internal sense of propriety and caution, a lingering reverence for Gorbachev and the old hopes of the thaw generation.

All this changed on the streets of Vilnius. The bloody, and failed, coup attempt in Lithuania in January of 1991 changed everything for nearly all the middle-aged and older intellectuals who had remained loyal to the idea of a reformed Communist Party. While Nezavisimaya Gazeta ’s staff was reporting the story of the Lithuanian coup attempt as if it were the logical extension of the events of the months before, Moscow News suddenly went through an ideological conversion. It lost all faith in Gorbachev. Karpinsky, Yegor Yakovlev, and a long list of shestidesyatniki signed a front-page editorial expressing outrage at the assault and declaring that the regime was “criminal” and was well into its “death throes.” For so long, most of these men and women had thought in terms of a socialism made somehow humane, of a steady pace of reform. Yakovlev, especially, had never liked Boris Yeltsin—never liked the way he attacked Gorbachev or conducted himself. Now this generation had nowhere to go but to Yeltsin and to the people Gorbachev had venomously referred to as “the so-called democrats.”

The staff at Nezavisimaya Gazeta viewed the conversion of Moscow News as pathetic. “The truth is, I could never understand why those people decided to make their split only when the tanks rolled into Vilnius,” Igor Zakharov said later. “It’s like trying to figure out why a woman who hates her husband for twenty years finally decides one day, after one little incident, to get up, walk out, and never come back.”

The dreams and the delusions of the editors at Moscow News died slowly. In March, Yakovlev invited Karpinsky and a few other friends to his apartment for a sixtieth-birthday party. “It was a meeting of people who didn’t know what to say to one another,” Yakovlev’s son Vladimir said. “The energy they used to have was gone, and the world around them was no longer their world. And, most important, they didn’t know how to relate to this new world. It was the feeling you get at the gatherings in Russia forty days after someone dies. No one is crying anymore, but no one knows quite what to say. These birthday gatherings had always been such celebrations. Now it was just all silence, a complete breakdown.”

Week after week, Nezavisimaya Gazeta was reinventing the newspaper in Moscow, and a twenty-seven-year-old reporter named Sergei Parkhomenko was consistently the paper’s most incisive political commentator. The son and grandson of journalists, Parkhomenko first won a name for himself at the monthly Teatr when he covered the first session of the Congress of People’s Deputies, in May of 1989—a job he called “the ultimate in theatre criticism.” He told me, “Imagine if you in America had held the Constitutional Convention live on television. The old order died a little every day. No play ever changed an audience more thoroughly.”

One night, I went with Parkhomenko to the printing presses at Izvestia , where Nezavisimaya Gazeta is published. He was the night-duty editor, acting as a liaison between the printers and the editors back at the Gazeta office, who are constantly trying to shove late items into the paper. He had already written a column in the morning and had called in a few items for his after-hours job as a stringer. Like many good young reporters in Moscow, Parkhomenko had discovered that he could make some hard currency on the side by working for a foreign news organization—in his case, Agence France-Presse, the official French wire service. As it turned out, the experience expanded his feeling for journalism. “With the French, I got a taste of real reporting,” he said. “It was a new sort of game. Who can be the first to get the information? Who can get sources? Before, it was all ‘I think this, I think that.’ Now the game had changed, and I loved it, and the skills were just what I needed. You see, I somehow always knew I would work at a place like Nezavisimaya Gazeta . I knew it instinctively. I wanted a place that was born without any complexes. There are more radical publications, but I’m not interested in the contest for who can be the most radical or liberal. I can’t stand unity and consensus.”

Parkhomenko is best known in Moscow for his commentaries—mainly because he refuses to shill for any one politician or party line—but he is also an instinctive investigative reporter. Last year, he caused a terrific scandal when he discovered that the Central Committee had for years been running a huge, fourteen-room workshop for manufacturing fake Western passports. He reported that there were fake stamps, blank passports for dozens of foreign countries, and even false mustaches and beards for the passport photographs.

Investigative work has been a signature of the front page of Nezavisimaya Gazeta . A married couple in their twenties at the paper, Anna Ostapchuk and Yevgeny Krasnikov, enraged the Party last summer when they scooped everyone by printing a copy of the Communist Party’s proposed new platform, endorsing a “democratic, humane socialism.” Ostapchuk’s methods were “quite simple and un-Soviet,” she told me. She had gone to the apartment of a Central Committee member, Vasily Lipitsky, and began asking about the platform. He gave her the document, which was twenty-three pages long and had been written by Gorbachev’s aide Georgi Shakhnazarov, and said she could read it, “but no notes and no tape recorders.”

“Then something odd happened,” Ostapchuk said. “Lipitsky said he had to take a phone call in the next room. As soon as he left, I got out my tape recorder and read the thing as fast as I could. He didn’t come back in time. I finished. But I’m sure he wanted me to do just that. It was terrific fun.”

Presented with the scoop, Tretyakov was stunned. At Moscow News , his bosses would never have permitted such a thing—too dangerous, a distinct lack of respect. But Tretyakov immediately published the piece. In a wry note to the readers, he wrote that ordinarily Nezavisimaya Gazeta did not print party manifestos and platforms, “because that would be a form of advertising,” and added, “But from such a party we would rather not take any money.”

The next day, as every newspaper in Moscow scurried to catch up with the story in Nezavisimaya Gazeta , Parkhomenko got a swift lesson in the sensibilities of the powerful. At a small, late-night press conference in the Moscow suburb of Novo-Ogarevo, Gorbachev looked at the reporters and said, “O.K., so who here is from Nezavisimaya Gazeta ?”

The reporter from state television, a whinnying timeserver, blanched and panicked. “No, no, it’s him,” he said, pointing at Parkhomenko.

“Where did you steal it from?” Gorbachev said.

“I can’t say,” Parkhomenko said.

“And why not?”

“Because that’s the way we work.”

After the press conference, two of Gorbachev’s aides tried to weasel the information out of Parkhomenko.

“Oh, come on,” one of them said. “You can tell me. I won’t tell another soul!”

Shakhnazarov, for his part, told me that he was shocked to see his work in the paper. “Woodward and Bernstein—that is not exactly something we’re used to,” he said.

Sometimes Tretyakov and Zakharov, the village elders at the paper, are scared by their own reporters—by the reporters’ relentlessness and giddy fearlessness. They are well aware of how inexperienced the reporters are, how little they know about degrees of reliability and balance. Often, reporters will turn in stories that are little more than rumors that seem too good to check. But, while the top editors often demand more reporting and numerous rewrites, they have seldom killed stories. According to everyone at the paper, the only story that Tretyakov refused to run without further questioning was the stuff about the K.G.B. and the Bolshoi Theatre that Karaulov had been trying to peddle to me.

“The reason these kids do things like investigative work is that they not only don’t fear the system—they don’t even respect it,” Zakharov said. “These kids are arrogant, silly, uneducated, and undisciplined, and they live only in the present. They don’t care about yesterday and have no idea that there is nothing new under the sun. But they have no prejudices. They don’t think ahead and wonder if someone at the Kremlin will think this or that about what they do. They just go ahead and do it.”

The young reporters have also changed the language of newspapers. They have dispensed with the wooden bureaucratese and fanatic sloganeering of the Soviet period. “We don’t talk Pravda language,” Parkhomenko said at the printshop.

Before I moved to Russia, I took a course at George Washington University in something my classmates and I called “newspaper Russian.” For weeks, we memorized endless lists of political clichés: “The talks were held in a warm and friendly atmosphere”; “The peace-loving comrade-nations of the world will face the imperialists in a round of negotiations next week”; and so on. It was the language of Novoyaz , or Newspeak, and nowhere had it reached such a level of absurdity as in the Soviet Union. But Nezavisimaya Gazeta ’s younger reporters had never had to write that way—or, at least, not for long. While someone like Len Karpinsky still has trouble removing the Novoyaz sludge from his prose—“I try, but I can’t always get it clear”—the Nezavisimaya Gazeta writers work under no such handicap.

“Right away, we tried to imitate Western language,” Parkhomenko said. “In Russian, there had never been the political language of a civilized country. So we adopted phrases like ‘the Yeltsin administration’—how could you talk about ‘the Brezhnev administration,’ or even ‘the Gorbachev administration’? At a certain point, we had to use Western terms for what had become, essentially, Western politics. All the old phrases of Pravda went out the window. The same was true of economics—we had to accommodate ‘investment,’ ‘entrepreneurship,’ and all the rest. Where we don’t imitate the Americans is in the question of point of view. We make no bones about the fact that the reporter is making some evaluation of what has happened. For us, the guarantee of fairness or objectivity is not that the reporter has no opinion but, rather, that the paper as a whole will hold a wide range of opinions.”

Tretyakov likes nothing better than to keep all political sides slightly angry with him. Yeltsin’s former press secretary, Pavel Voshchanov, wrote letters of complaint, expressing incredulity at how an independent newspaper could be so critical of a democratic leader. When Gorbachev’s popularity was at its lowest, last spring, Tretyakov wrote a piece called “Apologia for Gorbachev,” which did not dispute the attacks on Gorbachev but did remind readers of the Soviet President’s accomplishments since he came to power. In the West, the piece might have seemed self-evident, even a last roar of Gorbymania. But in Moscow, where Gorbachev was alone in a political “center” that existed nowhere except in his mind, Tretyakov’s piece, with its insistence on Gorbachev’s extraordinary achievements of ending the Cold War and the arms race, and creating democratic parliaments and a free press, was a contrarian bombshell. The Yeltsin forces wondered just what this new paper was up to. “And that is just the way I like it,” Tretyakov said.

But, of course, it was the August coup and Nezavisimaya Gazeta ’s coverage of the ensuing collapse of the Soviet Union that insured the paper’s reputation. Even now, months later, there is at the paper a distinct nostalgia for the August events—a longing for the excitement and camaraderie. Small wonder. Vladimir Todres, a twenty-five-year-old political reporter, said that he and his friends at the paper saw the coup as the defining event of their generation—the street-level, media-age equivalent of what the Twentieth Party Congress was for Karpinsky, Gorbachev, and the thaw generation.

“For us, the putsch was not simply a matter of politics,” Todres said. “Usually, we hate politics, to tell you the truth. But this was the Pepsi Generation under threat. Our very existence was in jeopardy. The bikers feared for their motorcycles. The young businessmen worried about their markets. The racketeers even thought about their bottom line and came to defend Yeltsin’s White House. Prostitutes, students, scholars—everybody—had an interest in this new life, and we were just not willing to give it all up to these old men. And, also, it was like being in a great movie. Life and art were all mixed up together. My friends who were abroad were heartbroken, not because they felt fear but because they felt left out. They couldn’t have a part in the movie.”

The journalism part of the movie was splendid. On the first day of the coup, Tretyakov decided not to defy the coup plotters’ press ban. His thinking was that a quick wrong move could endanger the staff and end the paper entirely. Some of the younger reporters were furious, especially after they heard that the printers at Izvestia were willing to defy the ban and work the presses. But Tretyakov insisted. The next day, as it became clearer that the coup leaders had neither the will nor the level of organization to mount a full-scale attack on the press as a whole, Tretyakov and the staff put out a Xeroxed version of Nezavisimaya Gazeta . This “underground” paper carried the lead headline “The Feeble Coup: It Is Still Not Over” and was filled with news about the putsch from Moscow and the provinces. At Moscow News , Karpinsky and editors of some of the other liberal papers published a makeshift Obshchaya Gazeta , or Common Newspaper .

In the meantime, the Nezavisimaya Gazeta reporters were working on the story—especially Parkhomenko and Pavel Felgenhauer, the paper’s defense analyst. Felgenhauer stayed in the White House throughout the three-day siege and was in constant contact with the military leaders planning Yeltsin’s strategy of resistance in their makeshift “war room.” Felgenhauer, a bearlike man who speaks English about as well as the average American college professor, never set out to be a journalist or a military expert. He has a Ph.D. in biology and won what he called “a measure of international fame” with his thesis, “RNA Synthesis During the Maturation of Frog Oocytes.” He told me, “I quit science because you can’t do science anymore in this country. We can’t even afford test tubes, or food for the frogs. So I became a journalist. I always liked to write.”

Felgenhauer had followed military affairs the way some American kids follow baseball. It was all a game, a combination of action and statistics. “Pavel is a kid who likes toy soldiers,” Parkhomenko said. “He’s a gigantic forty-year-old kid who is a genius. He loved the coup, because he got to play soldier and war correspondent all at once.”

Parkhomenko could not believe the look of supreme contentment in his colleague’s eyes as they sat in the White House. “As for me, I was terrified,” he said. “I thought I was a dead man—the romance of the White House is long gone. Now they try to say that it was all nothing, that there was never any danger. But that’s ridiculous. It was all a war of nerves, a dangerous telephone war. There were orders and counter-orders by phone. When the Russian government found out that a contingent of tanks was being sent, its people set up rows of gas cannisters so that there would be a huge explosion. Their strategy all along was to maximize the threat of bloodshed, to scare the shit out of the K.G.B. and the putschists by essentially using unarmed people as a shield. It was not an especially humane strategy, but it worked. The coup guys wanted a surgical operation, and the Russians made that impossible. Thank God, we lived.”

After the coup, the paper no longer seemed very new. What took decades at the New York Times took less than a year at Nezavisimaya Gazeta . Russia has entered the post-Soviet age with Vitaly Tretyakov’s brainchild as the country’s premier newspaper. “We have to face it,” Igor Zakharov said. “We’re the establishment now.” At Moscow News , Karpinsky became editor-in-chief late last August, after Gorbachev and Yeltsin put Yegor Yakovlev in charge of the state television bureaucracy.

The Nezavisimaya Gazeta reporters have discovered that respectability has its advantages. Felgenhauer now says that he gets secret military documents “by the boxful,” simply through the connections he developed while he sat with the Russian generals during the coup. A few months ago, two officers from military intelligence provided him with an exposé of incompetence in the agency. The only details Felgenhauer left out were “about a particularly juicy sex scandal—we have standards, unfortunately.”

Nezavisimaya Gazeta is getting better known all the time. At the moment, “no one exactly owns the paper,” Tretyakov said, but he is in the process of setting up a joint-stock operation, with all the employees investing and holding shares. The paper just made a million rubles from an advertising supplement and is buying I.B.M.-knockoff computers for a newsroom that will no longer resemble the set of “The Front Page.” Nezavisimaya Gazeta ’s reputation has grown so quickly abroad that many émigrés prefer it to New York’s Novoye Russkoye Slovo ( New Russian Word ) or the Paris Russkaya Mysl ( Russian Thought ). You can find the paper in Paris and at a few émigré bookstores in New York. Like Moscow News , Nezavisimaya Gazeta is now published in Russian in Israel, in English in the United States and Britain, and in French in France and other European countries. To get hold of more foreign currency, Tretyakov has started a wire service, called NeGa, so that news bureaus in Moscow can keep up with developments in the Russian provinces and former republics. He is also planning a tabloid (“for the lower-brow reader”), and is thinking about getting into radio and television.

But, while Tretyakov is nearly dizzy with success, he realizes that the euphoria around the paper’s office is long gone. The stretch last year when reporters worked for nothing and with no sleep is a memory. Zakharov is fed up with Tretyakov’s insistence on doing everything himself, and is thinking about quitting. The foreign editor hasn’t been getting along with Tretyakov lately, and he may go, too. Some of the youngest reporters, especially, worry that Tretyakov is becoming as autocratic as his old bosses at Moscow News were.

“In one year, the atmosphere around here has changed completely,” I was told by Yuri Leonov, who is twenty-three and writes about foreign affairs. “In the beginning, we sat together and divided up all the questions and decided things together. Now there is a ruling class. I feel like a rank worker all of a sudden—a peon. No one asks my opinion about anything. When we started out, Vitaly said, ‘Don’t you think we need a union?’ We all laughed, and said, ‘What for? Do you think we need a Communist organization?’ Well, now we have discovered that there is nothing to protect us.”

Tretyakov has listened to these complaints many times. After Tatyana Malkina talked with him for four hours one afternoon, recommending a return to the old, informal ways at the paper, Tretyakov showed up for work wearing a sweater and jeans, and constantly asked for suggestions at the morning editorial meetings. But within a couple of days he was back in his jacket and tie.

“Common sense tells me that two hundred people can’t all be friends,” he said to me. “Those days are over. We can’t continue to work in chaos. We can’t have people drinking in the office or Misha Leontiev coming late to every editorial meeting. I have to keep reminding people that this was my idea—I started this paper. If we run this place like a party, we can come up with a few euphoric issues and can all congratulate one another. But that is no way to run a newspaper month after month after month. We are a business now. That’s the brave new world. It’s time we recognized it.”

Just as Tretyakov finished on that stern note, there was a knock at his door. The entire staff had assembled, bearing gifts: a huge bunch of carnations and an eight-pack of Swedish cheese slices. “Remember,” said Tatyana Malkina, the head of the delegation. “We’ll always love you.” Vitaly Tretyakov blushed. It was his birthday. He had forgotten, but the staff had not. He was forty years old. ♦

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Cruising the Moskva River: A short guide to boat trips in Russia’s capital

There’s hardly a better way to absorb Moscow’s atmosphere than on a ship sailing up and down the Moskva River. While complicated ticketing, loud music and chilling winds might dampen the anticipated fun, this checklist will help you to enjoy the scenic views and not fall into common tourist traps.

How to find the right boat?

There are plenty of boats and selecting the right one might be challenging. The size of the boat should be your main criteria.

Plenty of small boats cruise the Moskva River, and the most vivid one is this yellow Lay’s-branded boat. Everyone who has ever visited Moscow probably has seen it.

This option might leave a passenger disembarking partially deaf as the merciless Russian pop music blasts onboard. A free spirit, however, will find partying on such a vessel to be an unforgettable and authentic experience that’s almost a metaphor for life in modern Russia: too loud, and sometimes too welcoming. Tickets start at $13 (800 rubles) per person.

Bigger boats offer smoother sailing and tend to attract foreign visitors because of their distinct Soviet aura. Indeed, many of the older vessels must have seen better days. They are still afloat, however, and getting aboard is a unique ‘cultural’ experience. Sometimes the crew might offer lunch or dinner to passengers, but this option must be purchased with the ticket. Here is one such option offering dinner for $24 (1,490 rubles).

If you want to travel in style, consider Flotilla Radisson. These large, modern vessels are quite posh, with a cozy restaurant and an attentive crew at your service. Even though the selection of wines and food is modest, these vessels are still much better than other boats.

Surprisingly, the luxurious boats are priced rather modestly, and a single ticket goes for $17-$32 (1,100-2,000 rubles); also expect a reasonable restaurant bill on top.

How to buy tickets?

Women holding photos of ships promise huge discounts to “the young and beautiful,” and give personal invitations for river tours. They sound and look nice, but there’s a small catch: their ticket prices are usually more than those purchased online.

“We bought tickets from street hawkers for 900 rubles each, only to later discover that the other passengers bought their tickets twice as cheap!” wrote (in Russian) a disappointed Rostislav on a travel company website.

Nevertheless, buying from street hawkers has one considerable advantage: they personally escort you to the vessel so that you don’t waste time looking for the boat on your own.

Prices start at $13 (800 rubles) for one ride, and for an additional $6.5 (400 rubles) you can purchase an unlimited number of tours on the same boat on any given day.

Flotilla Radisson has official ticket offices at Gorky Park and Hotel Ukraine, but they’re often sold out.

Buying online is an option that might save some cash. Websites such as this offer considerable discounts for tickets sold online. On a busy Friday night an online purchase might be the only chance to get a ticket on a Flotilla Radisson boat.

This website (in Russian) offers multiple options for short river cruises in and around the city center, including offbeat options such as ‘disco cruises’ and ‘children cruises.’ This other website sells tickets online, but doesn’t have an English version. The interface is intuitive, however.

Buying tickets online has its bad points, however. The most common is confusing which pier you should go to and missing your river tour.

“I once bought tickets online to save with the discount that the website offered,” said Igor Shvarkin from Moscow. “The pier was initially marked as ‘Park Kultury,’ but when I arrived it wasn’t easy to find my boat because there were too many there. My guests had to walk a considerable distance before I finally found the vessel that accepted my tickets purchased online,” said the man.

There are two main boarding piers in the city center: Hotel Ukraine and Park Kultury . Always take note of your particular berth when buying tickets online.

Where to sit onboard?

Even on a warm day, the headwind might be chilly for passengers on deck. Make sure you have warm clothes, or that the crew has blankets ready upon request.

The glass-encased hold makes the tour much more comfortable, but not at the expense of having an enjoyable experience.

Getting off the boat requires preparation as well. Ideally, you should be able to disembark on any pier along the way. In reality, passengers never know where the boat’s captain will make the next stop. Street hawkers often tell passengers in advance where they’ll be able to disembark. If you buy tickets online then you’ll have to research it yourself.

There’s a chance that the captain won’t make any stops at all and will take you back to where the tour began, which is the case with Flotilla Radisson. The safest option is to automatically expect that you’ll return to the pier where you started.

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The Comprehensive Guide to Moscow Nightlife

Posted on April 14, 2018 July 26, 2018
by Kings of Russia
8 minute read

Moscow’s nightlife scene is thriving, and arguably one of the best the world has to offer – top-notch Russian women, coupled with a never-ending list of venues, Moscow has a little bit of something for everyone’s taste. Moscow nightlife is not for the faint of heart – and if you’re coming, you better be ready to go Friday and Saturday night into the early morning.

This comprehensive guide to Moscow nightlife will run you through the nuts and bolts of all you need to know about Moscow’s nightclubs and give you a solid blueprint to operate with during your time in Moscow.

What you need to know before hitting Moscow nightclubs

Prices in moscow nightlife.

Before you head out and start gaming all the sexy Moscow girls , we have to talk money first. Bring plenty because in Moscow you can never bring a big enough bankroll. Remember, you’re the man so making a fuzz of not paying a drink here or there will not go down well.

Luckily most Moscow clubs don’t do cover fees. Some electro clubs will charge 15-20$, depending on their lineup. There’s the odd club with a minimum spend of 20-30$, which you’ll drop on drinks easily. By and large, you can scope out the venues for free, which is a big plus.

Bottle service is a great deal in Moscow. At top-tier clubs, it starts at 1,000$. That’ll go a long way with premium vodka at 250$, especially if you have three or four guys chipping in. Not to mention that it’s a massive status boost for getting girls, especially at high-end clubs.

Without bottle service, you should estimate a budget of 100-150$ per night. That is if you drink a lot and hit the top clubs with the hottest girls. Scale down for less alcohol and more basic places.

Dress code & Face control

Door policy in Moscow is called “face control” and it’s always the guy behind the two gorillas that gives the green light if you’re in or out.

In Moscow nightlife there’s only one rule when it comes to dress codes:

You can never be underdressed.

People dress A LOT sharper than, say, in the US and that goes for both sexes. For high-end clubs, you definitely want to roll with a sharp blazer and a pocket square, not to mention dress shoes in tip-top condition. Those are the minimum requirements to level the playing field vis a vis with other sharply dressed guys that have a lot more money than you do. Unless you plan to hit explicit electro or underground clubs, which have their own dress code, you are always on the money with that style.

Getting in a Moscow club isn’t as hard as it seems: dress sharp, speak English at the door and look like you’re in the mood to spend all that money that you supposedly have (even if you don’t). That will open almost any door in Moscow’s nightlife for you.

Types of Moscow Nightclubs

In Moscow there are four types of clubs with the accompanying female clientele:

High-end clubs:

These are often crossovers between restaurants and clubs with lots of tables and very little space to dance. Heavy accent on bottle service most of the time but you can work the room from the bar as well. The hottest and most expensive girls in Moscow go there. Bring deep pockets and lots of self-confidence and you have a shot at swooping them.

Regular Mid-level clubs:

They probably resemble more what you’re used to in a nightclub: big dancefloors, stages and more space to roam around. Bottle service will make you stand out more but you can also do well without. You can find all types of girls but most will be in the 6-8 range. Your targets should always be the girls drinking and ideally in pairs. It’s impossible not to swoop if your game is at least half-decent.

Basic clubs/dive bars:

Usually spots with very cheap booze and lax face control. If you’re dressed too sharp and speak no Russian, you might attract the wrong type of attention so be vigilant. If you know the local scene you can swoop 6s and 7s almost at will. Usually students and girls from the suburbs.

Electro/underground clubs:

Home of the hipsters and creatives. Parties there don’t mean meeting girls and getting drunk but doing pills and spacing out to the music. Lots of attractive hipster girls if that is your niche. That is its own scene with a different dress code as well.

What time to go out in Moscow

Moscow nightlife starts late. Don’t show up at bars and preparty spots before 11pm because you’ll feel fairly alone. Peak time is between 1am and 3am. That is also the time of Moscow nightlife’s biggest nuisance: concerts by artists you won’t know and who only distract your girls from drinking and being gamed. From 4am to 6am the regular clubs are emptying out but plenty of people, women included, still hit up one of the many afterparty clubs. Those last till well past 10am.

As far as days go: Fridays and Saturdays are peak days. Thursday is an OK day, all other days are fairly weak and you have to know the right venues.

The Ultimate Moscow Nightclub List

Short disclaimer: I didn’t add basic and electro clubs since you’re coming for the girls, not for the music. This list will give you more options than you’ll be able to handle on a weekend.

Preparty – start here at 11PM

Classic restaurant club with lots of tables and a smallish bar and dancefloor. Come here between 11pm and 12am when the concert is over and they start with the actual party. Even early in the night tons of sexy women here, who lean slightly older (25 and up).

The second floor of the Ugolek restaurant is an extra bar with dim lights and house music tunes. Very small and cozy with a slight hipster vibe but generally draws plenty of attractive women too. A bit slower vibe than Valenok.

Very cool, spread-out venue that has a modern library theme. Not always full with people but when it is, it’s brimming with top-tier women. Slow vibe here and better for grabbing contacts and moving on.

High-end: err on the side of being too early rather than too late because of face control.

Secret Room

Probably the top venue at the moment in Moscow . Very small but wildly popular club, which is crammed with tables but always packed. They do parties on Thursdays and Sundays as well. This club has a hip-hop/high-end theme, meaning most girls are gold diggers, IG models, and tattooed hip hop chicks. Very unfavorable logistics because there is almost no room no move inside the club but the party vibe makes it worth it. Strict face control.

Close to Secret Room and with a much more favorable and spacious three-part layout. This place attracts very hot women but also lots of ball busters and fakes that will leave you blue-balled. Come early because after 4am it starts getting empty fast. Electronic music.

A slightly kitsch restaurant club that plays Russian pop and is full of gold diggers, semi-pros, and men from the Caucasus republics. Thursday is the strongest night but that dynamic might be changing since Secret Room opened its doors. You can swoop here but it will be a struggle.

Mid-level: your sweet spot in terms of ease and attractiveness of girls for an average budget.

Started going downwards in 2018 due to lax face control and this might get even worse with the World Cup. In terms of layout one of the best Moscow nightclubs because it’s very big and bottle service gives you a good edge here. Still attracts lots of cute girls with loose morals but plenty of provincial girls (and guys) as well. Swooping is fairly easy here.

I haven’t been at this place in over a year, ever since it started becoming ground zero for drunken teenagers. Similar clientele to Icon but less chic, younger and drunker. Decent mainstream music that attracts plenty of tourists. Girls are easy here as well.

Sort of a Coyote Ugly (the real one in Moscow sucks) with party music and lots of drunken people licking each others’ faces. Very entertaining with the right amount of alcohol and very easy to pull in there. Don’t think about staying sober in here, you’ll hate it.

Artel Bessonitsa/Shakti Terrace

Electronic music club that is sort of a high-end place with an underground clientele and located between the teenager clubs Icon and Gipsy. Very good music but a bit all over the place with their vibe and their branding. You can swoop almost any type of girl here from high-heeled beauty to coked-up hipsters, provided they’re not too sober.

Afterparty: if by 5AM you haven’t pulled, it’s time to move here.

Best afterparty spot in terms of trying to get girls. Pretty much no one is sober in there and savage gorilla game goes a long way. Lots of very hot and slutty-looking girls but it can be hard to tell apart who is looking for dick and who is just on drugs but not interested. If by 9-10am you haven’t pulled, it is probably better to surrender.

The hipster alternative for afterparties, where even more drugs are in play. Plenty of attractive girls there but you have to know how to work this type of club. A nicer atmosphere and better music but if you’re desperate to pull, you’ll probably go to Miks.

Weekday jokers: if you’re on the hunt for some sexy Russian girls during the week, here are two tips to make your life easier.

Chesterfield

Ladies night on Wednesdays means this place gets pretty packed with smashed teenagers and 6s and 7s. Don’t pull out the three-piece suit in here because it’s a “simpler” crowd. Definitely your best shot on Wednesdays.

If you haven’t pulled at Chesterfield, you can throw a Hail Mary and hit up Garage’s Black Music Wednesdays. Fills up really late but there are some cute Black Music groupies in here. Very small club. Thursday through Saturday they do afterparties and you have an excellent shot and swooping girls that are probably high.

Shishas Sferum

This is pretty much your only shot on Mondays and Tuesdays because they offer free or almost free drinks for women. A fairly low-class club where you should watch your drinks. As always the case in Moscow, there will be cute girls here on any day of the week but it’s nowhere near as good as on the weekend.

In a nutshell, that is all you need to know about where to meet Moscow girls in nightlife. There are tons of options, and it all depends on what best fits your style, based on the type of girls that you’re looking for.

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River Cruise on Luxurious Radisson Boat

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Equipped with ice-breaking technology, these huge fancy yachts are the only river cruisers running all year around. The round trip journey takes two and a half hours and floats past all the big sights like the White House, Novodevichy monastery and the Kremlin. There’s a large open air observation deck up top, while the main body of the ship houses a restaurant with a dance floor for a romantic post dinner dance. For a particularly romantic experience take one of the evening boats and admire the bright lights of the city skyline at night.

The most relaxing and picturesque tour that Moscow can offer: a great way to see the city center and its main attractions. This is a perfect alternative to exploring the city by car, if you only have time to do sightseeing during weekday rush hours.

Your English-speaking guide is eager to share every bit of their knowledge about the surrounding landscape, the architecture and historical details.

We conduct Moscow river tour on Radisson Flotilla boats all year around! It’s warm inside during winter months, while there’s air conditioning during hot summer days. You may also treat yourself to drinks, lunch or dinner on board (drinks and food are not included in tour price).

The cost of an excursion with a personal guide for 1 person

Quay at Radisson Collection Hotel

Government Headquarters ("the White House")

Kievsky Railway Central

Novodevichy Convent

Luzhniki Stadium

Academy of Sciences

Monument to Peter I

Cathedral of Christ the Saviour

Moscow Kremlin

St.Basil's Cathedral

Novospassky Monastery

U-turn and back to Quay at Radisson Royal Hotel

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Who's going.

Excursion River Cruise on Luxurious Radisson Boat
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See photo of the meeting point

IMAGES

The Crown True Story: The Royal Yacht Britannia
The story behind the Royal Yacht Britannia
2 giugno 1992, Draghi sul Britannia. Trenta anni dopo Mario come i Soviet
Royal Yacht Britannia in history
The story behind the Royal Yacht Britannia
Where is Royal Yacht Britannia berthed now, when was the Queen's vessel

COMMENTS

HMY Britannia
Her Majesty's Yacht Britannia is the former royal yacht of the British monarchy.She was in their service from 1954 until 1997. She was the 83rd such vessel since King Charles II acceded to the throne in 1660, and is the second royal yacht to bear the name, the first being the racing cutter built for the Prince of Wales in 1893. During her 43-year career, the yacht travelled more than a million ...
Royal Yacht Britannia History: When Did The Queen Retire The Royal
The tradition of a royal yacht stretches back to 1660, when Charles II became England's king. To mark his return to the throne, his Dutch allies gave him an extravagant gift: a yacht called the Mary. As well as being built for speed, she was also designed with opulence in mind. "To give it the more lustre", the ship's exterior was ...
Former Royal Yachtsmen
During Britannia's 44 years in service, there were an estimated 3,295 crew who proudly served aboard the Royal Yacht. Below are lists of the former Officers and Royal Yachtsmen. They were meticulously compiled over a five year period by M J Hill [Lt Cdr Royal Navy, LSA (S) HM Yacht Britannia 1960-63]. We are very grateful to him for his ...
The Royal Yacht Britannia
The christening of The Royal Yacht Britannia serves as a cheeky season opener to The Crown. Black-and-white Pathé News-style footage shows a soon-to-be-crowned Queen Elizabeth II (Claire Foy ...
The Story Behind the Royal Family's Yacht, Britannia
It was the first royal yacht designed for ocean travel. The ship was built by John Brown & Co at the same shipyard in Clydebank, Scotland in the same location the famous ocean liners the Queen ...
The Retirement of a Longtime Royal Yacht
December 11, 1997 Britannia, a vessel that had served as the royal yacht of British monarch Queen Elizabeth II for more than four decades, was decommissioned in a ceremony at the Portsmouth naval base on England's south coast. Along with highlighting Britannia's "brass fittings gleaming in the winter sunshine and flags rippling in a brisk…
HMY Britannia (Royal Cutter Yacht)
Height. 164 ft (50 m) Draught. 15 ft (4.6 m) Sail plan. 10,328 sq ft (959.5 m 2) (1893) His Majesty's Yacht Britannia was a gaff-rigged cutter built in 1893 for RYS Commodore Albert Edward, Prince of Wales. She served both himself and his son King George V with a long racing career.
The Crown: The Real History of the Royal Yacht Britannia
Britannia was launched by the Queen on April 16, 1953, and commissioned on January 11, 1954. Royal Yacht Britannia served Prince Charles and Princess Anne on her maiden voyage, taking them to the ...
10 Facts About Royal Yacht Britannia
2. Britannia was the 83rd Royal Yacht. King George VI, Elizabeth II's father, had first commissioned the royal yacht that would become Britannia in 1952. The previous official boat had belonged to Queen Victoria and was rarely used. The tradition of royal yachts had been started by Charles II in 1660.
The HMY Britannia: Inside History's Last British Royal Yacht
The HMY Britannia has been out of commission since 1997, but the last British royal yacht still floats in a Scottish port, secured of a place in history. HMY stands for "His or Her Majesty's Yacht," and during its 44 years on the sea, the Britannia earned its monicker, having hosted its fare share of world leaders and royal honeymoons.
Reflecting on Edinburgh's Royal Yacht Britannia 25 years after arriving
When the Royal Yacht Britannia was decommissioned in 1997 following forty-four years of serving the country, the late Queen Elizabeth II thanked the ship and its crew for providing "great support" to the nation.. Having sailed one million miles, carrying over 700 hundreds royal visits at home and overseas, the Queen hailed the ship's achievements as "a great testament to those who designed and ...
The Royal Yacht Britannia: How The Queen created a floating home and
From as early as 1939, bids had been invited to construct a new Royal Yacht capable of long-distance travel. War and austerity put paid to the initiative, but a visit by George VI to South Africa in 1947 on board the battleship HMS Vanguard revived it. As The Queen commented at Britannia's launch, George VI 'felt most strongly, as I do, that a yacht was a necessity and not a luxury for the ...
What Happened To The Royal Yacht Britannia?
The Royal Yacht Britannia, George decided, should both be an extravagant vessel and a functional one, able to double as a hospital if times of war were to arise again. In 1953, the newly crowned Queen Elizabeth christened the ship with a bottle of wine, as champagne was still seen as too extravagant post-war. In 1954, she set sail for the first ...
King Charles III makes a poignant return to the Royal Yacht Britannia
King Charles III yesterday made a poignant return to the Royal Yacht Britannia. A 'home from home' for Queen Elizabeth II, the Duke of Edinburgh and their four children, the Royal Yacht Britannia held an important place in the lives of the Royal Family for more than four decades until it was decommissioned in 1997.
What Happened to the Royal Yacht Britannia? How to Visit It
Although The Crown is a dramatized retelling of the royal family's history, the yacht is very much real. The 412-foot vessel could hold more than 250 guests. The Britannia also hosted U.S ...
What Happened to the Royal Yacht Britannia?
November 15, 2022. The Queen boards the Royal Yacht Britannia. Tim Graham/Getty Images. The Crown season five begins and ends with the same plot point: The Royal Yacht Britannia. The vessel serves ...
Royal Yacht Britannia Facts Everyone Should Know—and How to Visit
The Britannia's Drawing Room. The ship's wheel was taken from King Edward VII's racing yacht, also named Britannia, according to Boat International, and the 126-meter ship could reach speeds of 22.75 knots, or a seagoing cruising speed of 21 knots, according to Super Yacht Times. Other fun facts: The yacht could produce her own fresh ...
Mario Draghi: from the Queen's Yacht to Kingpin of the EU
Thirty years ago, on June 2, 1992, a rather young director general of the Italian Treasury Ministry named Mario Draghi started his career in the service of the British Empire by boarding Queen Elizabeth's royal yacht Britannia, anchored off the Italian port of Civitavecchia (Rome), to give the main speech before a selected group of City of London bankers and Italian businessmen on the ...
Amazing Photos Show the Inside of the Royal Yacht Britannia
The Royal Yacht Britannia was built by the Clyde shipbuilders Messrs John Brown & Co at a cost of £2,098,000 to replace her 50-year-old predecessor, Victoria and Albert III. The vessel was named and launched by The Queen on 16 April 1953 and was commissioned on 11 January 1954. The name was The Queen's personal choice.
Moscow, a Newspaper City
David Remnick meets the city's best-known newspaper editors, including the founder of Nezavisimaya Gazeta—"the closest thing Russia has ever had to a Western daily," he wrote, in 1992.
Alexa Of London
About Alexa Of London. 37m 1992 Gaff-Rigged Cutter. A classic sailing yacht inspired by the first Royal Yacht Britannia, with a light and airy contemporary interior. Beautifully maintained by her current owners of ten years. Alexa of London sleeps 8 in 4 en-suite cabins. Crew of 4 or 5.
Cruising the Moskva River: A short guide to boat trips in Russia's
Surprisingly, the luxurious boats are priced rather modestly, and a single ticket goes for $17-$32 (1,100-2,000 rubles); also expect a reasonable restaurant bill on top.
The Comprehensive Guide to Moscow Nightlife
Dress code & Face control. Door policy in Moscow is called "face control" and it's always the guy behind the two gorillas that gives the green light if you're in or out. In Moscow nightlife there's only one rule when it comes to dress codes: You can never be underdressed. People dress A LOT sharper than, say, in the US and that goes ...
River Cruise on Luxurious Radisson Boat
Guided tour. 2,5 hours. Популярные , Речные прогулки. Code: 10147. Equipped with ice-breaking technology, these huge fancy yachts are the only river cruisers running all year around. The round trip journey takes two and a half hours and floats past all the big sights like the White House, Novodevichy monastery and the ...