Served 34 years in Royal Yacht Britannia

Loyal service allowed Queen to ‘truly relax’

Warrant Officer “Norrie’ Norrell, who has died aged 87, was a yachtsman who gave unstintingly loyal and dedicated service to the Royal Family.

His 34 years’ service and 750,000 nautical miles in the Royal Yacht Britannia, from Able Seaman to Warrant Officer, made him the longest serving “yottie” in the ship the Queen once described as “the only place where I can truly relax.”

“It was the Queen’s home,” Norrell told an interviewer. “Wherever she went in the world, she could come back at night to her own staff. It was somewhere where she could kick her shoes off and relax.”

Among the earliest state visits during Norrell’s service were Princess Margaret’s tour of East Africa and the Duke of Edinburgh’s opening of the Melbourne Olympic Games in 1956, the Queen’s visit to Portugal in 1957, and the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway in 1959. But many of Norrell’s memories were much more personal.

He recalled organizing treasure hunts for the young Prince Charles and Princess Anne, the children pretending to steer Britannia as though they were driving a car; and teaching the younger princes to fly kites and lay lobster pots. Once he received a note from a royal nanny to say they were learning words they did not understand.

Ellis Victor Norrell was born on Dec. 7, 1933 in Portland, Dorset, and educated at Chichester High School for Boys, before joining the Navy at the boys’ training establishment, HMS St Vincent, in Gosport. He served in the battleship Vanguard, the depot ships Montclare and Adamant, the minesweeper Lioness, in the stone frigate Dryad and in Nelson’s Victory when he qualified as a radar plotter and as a shallow water diver.

In 1988 Norrell was made a member of the Royal Victorian Order, discharged to pension, and immediately re-employed at Windsor Castle. There he joined the royal household, where he spent the next eight years responsible for the security of Royal heirlooms during refurbishment of parts of the castle, particularly after the fire in 1992.

Ellis Norrell married, in 1957, Grace Michie, who died in 2005; he is survived by their three daughters.