Email from Oregon Buddy Mays

Email from Oregon

The Prince & The Pauper Redux

(Please forgive me, Mark Twain)

By Buddy Mays

In early April of this 2021, my favorite Personage of Royalty, Prince Phillip, Duke of Edinburgh, and Prince Consort of Queen Elizabeth, died peacefully, at home, in bed at Windsor Castle, at age 99. It was a sad moment for me. I don’t know many Personages of Royalty, but I did know Prince Phillip. Or at least I met him. Once. More or less.

It was the summer of 1962. I was an 18year-old seaman stationed aboard the United States Coast Guard training ship Eagle, a 295foot long, square-rigged “windjammer” used to educate Coast Guard cadets in the fine arts of navigation and seamanship. We had been at sea for nearly two months, sailing from the Coast Guard Academy in New London, Connecticut to the Canary Islands off the west coast of Africa, then north to the Azores, Antwerp, Belgium, and the British Isles. It had been an amazing voyage, especially for a naïve kid from New Mexico, who until the previous year had never even seen an ocean, let alone sailed on one.

The Eaglereached Edinburgh, Scotland—her final stop before heading home—right on schedule and had tied up at the city pier near Leith. The crew was

informed by the captain that Prince Phillip, the Duke of Edinburgh, and husband of the Queen, was in Scotland and would make a quick, military style review of the ship, abovedeck only, the following morning. The officers and senior NCOs were ordered to be in full dress uniform and in review formation on the Parade Deck by nine a.m. The 150 or so cadets, also in dress uniform, were to climb the rigging and spread out along the yardarms and salute when the Prince came aboard. The enlisted men, of which I was one, had not been invited to join the gathering and were ordered to stand down and stay out of sight.

At 9: 15 the following morning, I was below deck in the crew area with 20 or so other sailors, ironing my dress white uniform in preparation for a 12-hour liberty ashore later that day. I was barefoot and wearing only a T-shirt and skivvy shorts, ironing away and dreaming of cold beer and Scottish lassies, when the crew area suddenly got dead quiet. Dead, like a morgue at midnight. I put the iron down and turned around, and there, ten feet away, staring directly at me, stood the Captain, accompanied by the Executive Officer, accompanied by Prince Phillip, accompanied by two or three solemn-looking aides. I snapped to attention and saluted, which must have looked truly stupid because American naval personnel are not supposed to salute anyone unless they are wearing a hat and are outdoors and are clad in something other than their underwear.

Prince Phillip took it all very well. Handsome and royal-looking in a natty, dark blue suit and dark tie, he left the captain’s side, strode directly to me, shook my hand, and asked how I was doing. I spluttered something, not sure what. Then he surprised everyone (you should have seen the look on the captain’s face) and asked if he could have a go at ironing my shirt. I spluttered something else, which he took for an ok, did a bit of ironing, smiled, slapped my shoulder, then left with the captain and contingent to finish the below-deck tour that was not supposed to have occurred.

I know all this sounds like B.S. but it really happened. I did not get court marshaled, or keel-hauled, or strung up by my thumbs from the mainmast (windjammer sailors did not have easy lives), for saluting indoors or being out of uniform. And strangely enough, the off-the-cuff encounter between Refined Royal and Skivvy Sailor was never mentioned by the captain or any of the officers. Too embarrassing, perhaps, to speak of. Prince Phillip has been my favorite Personage of Royalty ever since. After all, anyone who can get away with saying “I don't think a prostitute is more moral than a wife, but they are doing the same thing,” while being married to the Queen of England, has got my respect. By the way, he did a dandy job ironing my dress jumper, as you can see from the picture taken an hour later on the Eagle'sforedeck.