THE vessel that carried Sir Winston Churchill’s coffin on its last journey on the Thames in 1965 is back on the river this-morning. The motor vessel Havengore is leading a flotilla of small ships for an Armistice Day Remembrance service

By Mike Brooke

THE vessel that carried Sir Winston Churchill’s coffin on its last journey on the Thames in 1965 is back on the river this-morning.

This time the motor vessel Havengore is leading a flotilla of small ships for an Armistice Day Remembrance service on the water.

She leaves from St Katharine’s Pier by Tower Bridge at 10am, passing the Tower of London, to reach the Houses of Parliament by 10.40am for the service.

As Big Ben chimes 11, a two-minute silence is observed before the service continues when a wreath is cast onto the water as a bugler sounds The Last Post.

Armistice Day, when the guns fell silent in the Great War on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, takes on special significance this year.

The last British serviceman alive to see active service at the Front was Henry Allingham, originally from Clapton in East London, who died earlier this year at 113.

The wreath laying on the Thames coincides with a national service of commemoration with the Queen at Westminster Abbey, while an RAF Hercules flies over the river dropping poppies in memory of those who fell.

The Havengore is running the same route as the State Funeral of Sir Winston Churchill, Britain’s Second World War leader, from Tower Bridge past the Tower of London, City Hall, HMS Belfast, London Bridge, the Golden Hinde replica, Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, Southwark Bridge, Tate Modern gallery, Blackfriars Bridge, Waterloo Bridge, Royal Festival Hall on the Southbank, Hungerford Bridge, the RAF Memorial on the Embankment, the London Eye and County Hall (former HQ of the LCC and GLC), Westminster Bridge to the bank opposite the Houses of Parliament.