Did you know... Queen Victoria’s Funeral 1901
The Alberta with the bier entering Portsmouth Harbour
The burial of Queen Victoria took place on 2 February 1901, exactly 120 years ago. The 81-year-old Queen had died at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight on Tuesday 22 January. Her 63-year reign had been the longest in British history, and - though not unexpected - the news certainly had a profound effect on the people of Portsmouth. We know that in response to the announcement the heavy booming of the Town Hall bell was heard, while all over the town churches tolled the ‘passing bell’; flags flew at half-mast and shutters went up on shops. On the following Sunday, churches in Portsmouth were draped in black and special services were held; Charles Darnell, vicar of St Thomas’s (who was to die himself barely 2 years later), preached morning and evening, and the long-serving organist Mr R.H. Turner ‘played the famous Dead March in ‘Saul’ in the morning and a funeral march at the evening service’.
On Friday 1 February, the day before the state funeral, The Times reported from Osborne House on the Isle of Wight that ‘the sky was cloudless and blue; the Solent looked like the Mediterranean itself.’ The body of the late Queen was brought from Osborne on a gun-carriage, with a military escort, to Trinity Pier, East Cowes, where the coffin was placed on a crimson dais on board the royal yacht Alberta. Precisely at five minutes to 3 o'clock the first note of warning to the Fleet at Spithead that the Alberta had set off was given by the firing of a gun from the ironclad Alexandra, off Cowes. The royal yacht started its short journey to Gosport, steaming slowly between 40 British warships, a flotilla that stretched 10 miles across the Solent. Immediately afterwards, minute guns were discharged from all the ships, the salute being fired from the sides of the vessels facing the shore. We can picture the scene along the sea edge in Old Portsmouth, where ‘piers, ramparts and beaches were black with crowds of people in mourning’, as for two hours the great bell of Portsmouth Town Hall tolled, and ships’ bands played funeral marches by Chopin and Beethoven. The firing of guns did not cease until 20 minutes to 5, as in the winter afternoon - the silver sea turning to gold as the sun set - the body of the Queen arrived at Royal Clarence Yard, Gosport, ‘her yacht gliding solemn and stately up a harbour which had not a ripple in the dead low water, and berthing quietly in the fading light alongside the old familiar landing-place’.
Queen Victoria funeral train timetable
The papers continued: ‘Hardly less solemn and striking than yesterday’s great historic Naval pageant was the night vigil on board the funeral barge, where the late Queen may almost be said to have lain in State upon the bosom of the waters over which till a few hours ago she held such regal sway. The coffin was guarded all night by trusty Marines … Outside the basin lay the Victoria and Albert, with the King and other royal mourners on board … beyond them the long array of warships, forming a glittering lane, scintillating with myriads of lights, and extending, as far as the eye could reach, across the still, dark waters of the Solent.’
The Mausoleum at Frogmore
By the morning of Saturday 2nd February, the weather had changed dramatically, and in gusting wind and rain the late Queen’s coffin was loaded on to the Royal Train, consisting of eight carriages, to carry her to Victoria Station in London. The train set off at 8.45am, preceded by a pilot train that ran 10 minutes ahead to make sure the line was clear, arriving at Victoria at 10.58, 2 minutes ahead of schedule. The cortège crossed the capital on foot to Paddington, still in pouring rain; from there, GWR Royal Train carriages took the Queen and the funeral party on to Windsor for the funeral, followed by a short procession to the interment at Frogmore Mausoleum in Windsor Home Park. It was reported at the time that though the noise of the cannon firing at her funeral was not heard on the outskirts of London, ‘yet it was heard loudly at a number of villages in an approximate ring around 150 kilometres from the source’. The gunfire saluted the end of an era in which most of Queen Victoria’s British subjects had known no other monarch. The Kings of the United Kingdom, Germany, Portugal and Greece, and the future kings of Denmark and Sweden were present at her funeral; when she died, Queen Victoria had 37 surviving great-grandchildren, whose marriages with other monarchies gave her the name the ‘grandmother of Europe.’