It took 98 sailors to pull the gun carriage containing the Queen’s coffin from the Houses of Parliament in London to Westminster Abbey. The gun mount, the undercarriage of a cannon, weighs more than 2,500 kilos. This special tradition of British state funerals has a fascinating history.
The gun carriage is called in English in full ‘Royal Navy State Funeral Gun Carriage’. The gun carriage was built in 1896 for the British Army. The gun carriage ultimately never saw active service in the military, but was probably part of the reserve equipment. In 1899 the gun carriage was converted as a base to carry the coffin during state funerals. On February 2, 1901, the gun carriage carried Queen Victoria’s coffin. A gun carriage had been used for the funeral of her son Prince Leopold, who had died aged thirty in 1884, and Queen Victoria wished the same for her own state funeral.
Why are the sailors pulling the 2.5-tonne structure? As tradition has it, Queen Elizabeth II’s coffin was taken to Westminster Abbey at 10:44 AM local time today by gun carriage from Westminster Hall, where she lay in state. 98 sailors pulled the colossus, while another 40 sailors followed behind the coffin on the gun carriage to be able to slow down.
That tradition dates back to the funeral of Queen Victoria on February 2, 1901. At that time it was still horses that pulled the coffin, but the animals panicked on a hill, possibly because of the cold. They nearly made the coffin fall from the gun mount, a shameful moment in front of the crowd that had gathered. Prince Louis of Battenberg (later Lodewijk Mountbatten) then took the initiative to salvage the situation and ordered through King Edward VII the Royal Navy sailors to take over the task of the horses. Nine years later, it was again sailors who pulled the coffin of King Edward VII. A tradition was born.
The Royal Navy State Funeral Gun Carriage was not only used for the funerals of Queen Victoria and King Edward VII, but also for that of King George V and – in 1952 – King George VI, the father of Queen Elizabeth II. The same honor also went to the state funeral of the Queen’s first Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, and that of Lord Louis Mountbatten, son of Louis of Battenberg and nephew of Queen Elizabeth II. That was in 1979, until now the last time.
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