HMS RENOWN wearing a Royal Standard, 1922

This original 1922 watercolour shows HMS RENOWN (Captain the Hon Herbert Meade DSO) wearing the Prince of Wales' Standard at the main; and the Royal Escort HMS COMUS (Captain Ralph Sneyd DSO) arriving home in Plymouth on 20th June 1922.  The battle cruiser was returning from a Royal tour of India and the Far East by the Prince  which had started 8 months earlier and had taken the Royal Squadron to Japan and India where the Prince’s ADC, Lieutenant Lord Louis Mountbatten, had become engaged to Edwina Ashley on St Valentine’s Day whilst the Royal Party were in Delhi.

We see here the Home Royal Escort of destroyers starting to take its leave of HRH; two prints (shown on www.maritimeprints.com) as MP037 and 139) also depict the scene earlier and later that evening. COMUS, further up the Sound and to the left in the painting, had joined as Royal Escort on 26th May in Colombo on the East Indies station where she had been based for two and a half years, and had escorted RENOWN home via the Suez canal, Malta and Gibraltar. RENOWN anchored at 1730 that evening, the Prince of Wales went across to COMUS ten minutes later to pay his farewells and at 2010 the battle cruiser moved up harbour and went alongside.  Fifty minutes later the light cruiser left Plymouth for Portsmouth where she anchored at 1850 at Spithead the next evening before proceeding up harbour the following morning and a reunion with families after 30 long months overseas.

Three days after arriving back in Plymouth HRH celebrated his 28th birthday and on 7th July Captain Jimmy Meade of RENOWN was appointed CVO by the King in recognition of his ship’s services to the Prince’s Tour.