A few days after their Coronation on Wednesday the 12th of May 1937, Their Majesties King George VI and Queen Elizabeth went to Portsmouth to review the fleet.

  The Queen must have been awe-inspired by the power and majesty of the Navy of those days, and she must have reflected upon the times when her husband was an active officer away from family circles and loved ones. She, no doubt, must have thought about the families of the thousands of sailors involved.

  It was probably their very first public engagement and how fitting it was that it should be a visit to the Royal Navy, to the men and women who epitomised all that was good about being British, and as history showed, the men and women who would hold the sword against the German, the Italian and the Japanese navies a few short months later.

  We are regularly told that the Queen was a prop to the King who "was not comfortable in public". I like to think that on this occasion when the King was in familiar surroundings, that both were very comfortable, very relaxed and very happy.

  Not many of us would have been in Portsmouth over that period at a time of her first public engagement as Queen, but most of us will have witnessed her last public engagement! From first hand experience, the latter was a magnificent affair, and judging from the Review Programme, so was the first.

1937 Coronation Fleet Review