Her Majesty's Yacht Britannia known as the Royal Yacht Britannia, is the former royal yacht of the British monarch, Queen Elizabeth II, in service from 1954 until 1997. She was the 83rd such vessel since King Charles II acceded to the throne in 1660, is the second royal yacht to bear the name, the first being the racing cutter built for the Prince of Wales in 1893. During her 43-year career, the yacht travelled more than a million nautical miles around the globe. Now retired from royal service, Britannia is permanently berthed at Ocean Terminal, Leith in Edinburgh, Scotland, it is a popular visitor attraction with over 300,000 visits each year. HMY Britannia was built at the shipyard of John Co.. Ltd in Clydebank, West Dunbartonshire, she was launched by Queen Elizabeth II on 16 April 1953, commissioned on 11 January 1954. The ship was designed with three masts: a 133-foot foremast, a 139-foot mainmast, a 118-foot mizzenmast; the top aerial on the foremast and the top 20 feet of the mainmast were hinged to allow the ship to pass under bridges.
Britannia was designed to be converted into a hospital ship in time of war, although this capability was never used. In the event of nuclear war, it was intended for the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh to take refuge aboard Britannia off the north-west coast of Scotland; the crew of Royal Yachtsmen were volunteers from the general service of the Royal Navy. Officers were appointed for up to two years, while the "yachtsmen" were volunteers and after 365 days' service could be admitted to "The Permanent Royal Yacht Service" as Royal Yachtsmen and served until they chose to leave the Royal Yacht Service or were dismissed for medical or disciplinary reasons; as a result, some served for 20 years or more. The ship carried a troop of Royal Marines when members of the Royal Family were on board. Britannia sailed on her maiden voyage from Portsmouth to Grand Harbour, departing on 14 April and arriving on 22 April 1954, she carried Princess Anne and Prince Charles to Malta in order for them to meet the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh in Tobruk at the end of the royal couple's Commonwealth Tour.
The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh embarked on Britannia for the first time in Tobruk on 1 May 1954. On 20 July 1959, Britannia sailed the newly opened Saint Lawrence Seaway en route to Chicago, where she docked, making the Queen the first British monarch to visit the city. US President Dwight D. Eisenhower was aboard Britannia for part of this cruise. Charles and Diana, the Prince and Princess of Wales, took their honeymoon cruise on Britannia in 1981; the ship evacuated over 1,000 refugees from the civil war in Aden in 1986. The vessel made a port of call in Toronto and Kingston, Ontario. HMY Britannia, when on royal duties, was escorted by a Royal Navy warship; the yacht was a regular sight at Cowes Week in early August and for the remainder of the month, was home to the Queen and her family for an annual cruise around the islands off the west coast of Scotland. During her career as Royal Yacht, Britannia conveyed the Queen, other members of the Royal Family and various dignitaries on 696 foreign visits and 272 visits in British waters.
In this time, Britannia steamed 1,087,623 nautical miles. In 1997, the Conservative government committed itself to replacing the Royal Yacht if reelected, while the Labour Party refused to disclose its plans for the vessel. After Labour won the general election in May 1997, it announced the vessel was to be retired and no replacement would be built; the previous government had argued that the cost was justified by its role in foreign policy and promoting British interests abroad through conferences held by British Invisibles the Committee on Invisible Exports. It was estimated by the Overseas Trade Board that events held on board the yacht helped raise £3 billion for the treasury between 1991 and 1995 alone; the new government said the expenditure could not be justified given other pressures on the defence budget, from which a replacement vessel would have been funded and maintained. Proposals for the construction of a new royal yacht financed through a loan or by the Queen's own funds, have made little headway.
In December 2019 it was reported that the late Donald Gosling has donated £50 million in his will to pay for it. The Royal Yacht's final foreign mission was to convey the last governor of Hong Kong, Chris Patten, the Prince of Wales back from Hong Kong after its handover to the People's Republic of China on 1 July 1997. Britannia was decommissioned on 11 December 1997; the Queen undemonstrative, is reported to have shed a tear at the decommissioning ceremony, attended by most of the senior members of the Royal Family. Listed as part of the National Historic Fleet, Britannia is a visitor attraction moored in the historic Port of Leith in Edinburgh, is cared for by the Royal Yacht Britannia Trust, a registered charity. There was some controversy over the siting of the ship, with some arguing that she would be better moored on the River Clyde, where she was built, than in Edinburgh, with which the yacht had few links, her positioning in Leith coincided with a redevelopment of the harbour area, the advent of Scottish devolution.
Entrance to the yacht is via the Ocean Terminal development, over 300,000 people visit the Royal Yacht Britannia every year. She is one of the UK's top evening events venues. On 18 May 2006, the Swiss-born Hollywood actress and first Bond girl, Ursula Andress, celebrated her 70th birthday on board the former royal yacht. On 29 July 2011, a drinks reception was held on board Brit
Gods' Man is a wordless novel by American artist Lynd Ward published in 1929. In 139 captionless woodblock prints, it tells the Faustian story of an artist who signs away his soul for a magic paintbrush. Gods' Man was the first American wordless novel, is considered a precursor of the graphic novel, whose development it influenced. Ward first encountered the wordless novel with Frans Masereel's The Sun while studying art in Germany in 1926, he established a career for himself as an illustrator. He found Otto Nückel's wordless novel Destiny in New York City in 1929, it inspired him to create such a work of his own. Gods' Man appeared a week before the Wall Street Crash of 1929, its success inspired other Americans to experiment with the medium, including cartoonist Milt Gross, who parodied Gods' Man in He Done Her Wrong. In the 1970s Ward's example inspired cartoonists Art Spiegelman and Will Eisner to create their first graphic novels; the wordless novel Gods' Man is a silent narrative made up of prints of 139 engraved woodblocks.
Each image moves the story forward by an interval. Ward wrote in Storyteller Without Words that too great an interval would put too much interpretational burden on the reader, while too little would make the story tedious. Wordless novel historian David A. Beronä likens these concerns with the storytelling methods of comics; the artwork is executed in white. Ward uses symbolic contrast of dark and light to emphasize the corruption of the city, where in daylight the buildings darken the skies. Ward exaggerates facial expression to convey emotion without resorting to words. Composition conveys emotion: in the midst of his fame, an image has the artist framed by raised wineglasses; the story parallels the Faust theme, the artwork and execution show the influence of film, in particular those of German studio Ufa. The placement of the apostrophe in the title Gods' Man implies a plurality of gods, rather than Judeo-Christianity's monotheistic God, it alludes to a line from the play Bacchides by ancient Roman playwright Plautus: "He whom the gods favor, dies young."
A poor artist signs a contract with a masked stranger, who gives him a magic brush, with which the artist rises in the art world. He is disillusioned, he wanders around the city, seeing his auctioneer and mistress in everyone he sees. Enraged by the hallucinations, he attacks one of them; the artist is jailed for it, but he escapes, a mob chases him from the city. He is injured. A woman who lives in the woods brings him back to health, they have a child, live a simple, happy life together, until the mysterious stranger returns and beckons the artist to the edge of a cliff. The artist prepares to paint a portrait of the stranger but fatally falls from the cliff with fright when the stranger reveals a skull-like head behind the mask. Chicago-born Lynd Ward was a son of Methodist minister Harry F. Ward, a social activist and the first chairman of the American Civil Liberties Union. Throughout his career, Ward displayed in his work the influence of his father's interest in social injustice, he was early drawn to art, decided to become an artist when his first-grade teacher told him that "Ward" spelled backward was "draw".
He excelled as a student, contributed art and text to high school and college newspapers. In 1926, after graduating from Teachers College, Columbia University, Ward married writer May McNeer and the couple left for an extended honeymoon in Europe. After four months in eastern Europe, the couple settled in Leipzig in Germany, where, as a special one-year student at the National Academy of Graphic Arts and Bookmaking, Ward studied wood engraving. There he encountered German Expressionist art, read the wordless novel The Sun, a modernized version of the story of Icarus, told in sixty-three wordless woodcut prints, by Flemish woodcut artist Frans Masereel. Ward returned to the United States in 1927, freelanced his illustrations. In 1929, he came across German artist Otto Nückel's wordless novel Destiny in New York City. Nückel's only work in the genre, Destiny told of the life and death of a prostitute in a style inspired by Masereel's, but with a greater cinematic flow; the work inspired Ward to create a wordless novel of his own, whose story sprang from his "youthful brooding" on the short, tragic lives of artists such as Van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec and Shelley.
In March 1929 Ward showed the first thirty blocks to Harrison Smith of the publisher Smith. Smith offered him a contract and told him the work would be the lead title in the company's first catalog if Ward could finish it by the summer's end; the first printing appeared that October. The trade edition was printed from electrotype plates made from molds of the original boxwood woodblocks.
Ricky Henry is an American football offensive guard, a free agent. He was signed by the Chicago Bears as an undrafted free agent in 2011, he played college football at Nebraska. Henry has played for the Atlanta Falcons, New Orleans Saints, Kansas City Chiefs Henry was a First-Team All-Big 12 after Senior season at Nebraska and won the Pat Clare Award. On July 26, 2011, Henry signed with the Chicago Bears as an undrafted free agent. On September 3, 2011, he was released. On September 4, he was signed to the practice squad. On November 16, 2011, he was promoted to the active roster. On August 31, 2012, he was released. On September 1, 2012, Henry signed with the New Orleans Saints to join their practice squad. On December 15, 2012, he was promoted to the active roster. On August 19, 2013, he was waived by the Saints. On August 20, 2013, Henry was claimed off waivers by the Kansas City Chiefs, he was released during final preseason roster cut downs on August 30, 2014. The next day he was signed to the Chiefs practice squad.
On June 17, 2015, Henry was signed by the Carolina Panthers. He was released on September 5, 2015. Nebraska Huskers bio Chicago Bears bio New Orleans Saints bio