Funeral of Queen Victoria
On 1st February 1901, Victoria started her final journey.
The funeral cortege crossed the Solent, flanked by 11 miles of battleships and cruisers, each booming out their ‘minute’ guns as the tiny yacht, ‘Alberta’, carrying the queen’s coffin, passed by.
The cortege then remained in the harbour overnight.
On the 2nd February, Victoria took her final train journey to Windsor.
The procession waited as the coffin was placed on the gun carriage.
Complications followed when the horses, having stood motionless
in the freezing weather, suddenly kicked and broke away from their traces, almost toppling the coffin to the ground.
The front of the procession had already marched off and reached the end of Windsor Street, before it could be stopped and turned around.
The Royal Horse Artillery were unable to re-harness the horses and disaster loomed.
Prince Louis Battenberg (grandfather of Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh) rescued the day, suggesting:
“If it is impossible to mend the traces you can always get the naval guard of honour to drag the gun carriage.”
138 bluejackets attached ropes to the carriage where the harnesses had been, and dragged the gun carriage to St George’s Chapel by hand – giving birth to a new royal tradition.
Victoria’s coffin was followed by the largest military procession since the Duke of Wellington’s funeral in 1852, through Hyde Park to Paddington.
The procession lasted two hours, with the queen’s coffin standing high on the gun carriage through the crowded, yet eerily silent streets.
The service in St George’s Chapel was also chaotic.
The clerical procession, led by two Archbishops, arrived an hour too early and had to stand patiently in the nave, which was half-empty owing to a major blunder by the Earl Marshal.
The earl’s officials were seen dragging guests from their seats to spread them out in order to hide the mistake.
The uncooperative Lord Chamberlain also tried to explain why he had requested that the women guests should come “in trousers”.
The official service was followed by a moving ceremony for the family on 4th February, in the mausoleum the queen had built for her husband at Frogmore, adjoining Windsor Castle.
King Edward VII and his grandson, the six-year-old future Edward VIII, knelt with the kaiser as the queen was slowly lowered in to the crypt, to be laid to rest beside her beloved Prince Albert.
Victoria’s funeral had cost £35,500 (£4.5 million).
As the Westminster Gazette reported after the funeral, the queen had outlived all the members of her Privy Council.
She also saw
10 prime ministers:
5 Archbishops of Canterbury:
6 commanders-in-chief:
18 presidents of the United States:
11 Viceroys of Canada:
16 Viceroys of India:
She saw France successively ruled by one king, one emperor and seven presidents, as a Republic.
She had also outlived all nine of her bridesmaids.
Crowds line the streets to watch the funeral cortege of Queen Victoria in February 1901.
Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images
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