The Duke of Cambridge had a touching reminder of his family history today when he came face to face with a model of the Royal Yacht Britannia, which was decommissioned 20 years ago.
The model, which was displayed at Hamburg Maritime Museum and was commissioned before anyone realised that the duke and duchess were going to visit Hamburg, was finished only two days ago.
“Is that Britannia?” an astonished Prince William asked. “It’s beautiful – amazing.”
The duke, who was on the last day of the royal couple’s five-day tour of Poland and Germany, was shown the 1:96 scale model by Christian Hinneborg, 30, grandson of the museum’s founder, who said that it took three months to build.
The duke, who was 15 when the ship ended her service with the royal family, said that he had been on Britannia only a few times. “I don’t know it that well,” he said.
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Asked if there were any mistakes, he joked: “I will have a careful look. I will get my magnifying glass out! But I’m not an expert. My father, being a naval man, would know. And my grandmother would definitely spot anything. But it is the most wonderful model.”
Asked why it had been built, Mr Hinneborg told the duke that he was passionate about royal and state yachts.
He said afterwards: “We ordered it without knowing that the duke and duchess were coming to Hamburg. It is a coincidence that it just got finished.”
In an impromptu addition to their museum tour, the duke and duchess tried their hand at the cargo ship simulator, which allows visitors to experience what it is like to navigate a ship into Hamburg harbour.
“Let’s see if I can hit that yacht!” joked William as he took the wheel.
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He may have had the wheel, but Hans Trey, the volunteer in charge of the simulator, put the duchess in charge and got her to sound the fog horn. “He is just the helmsman,” he said of her husband. “You are the captain.”
Afterwards Mr Trey said: “They did a wonderful job. He wanted to go at full speed, but we would have told him later on to stop the ship. He knew exactly how to steer — I didn’t have to tell him.”
The couple were also shown a 6.9m (22ft 7in) long Lego model of the liner Queen Mary 2, and met a group of scientists working on a variety of ocean-related projects as part of the UK-German Year of Science.
Tim Eder, a government official who told the couple about a schools project about plastic waste in the ocean, said: “They expressed their concern about single-use plastic bags.”