This panel
is known as the Royal Navy’s because between May 1987, when the Port Admiral’s wife made the first stitch and
November 1996 many serving personnel and Navy wives gave much of their off-duty spare time to create it in their own church
at HMS Drake in Devonport and inviting stitches from hundreds of visitors during annual Navy Days celebrations.
The scene celebrates the
defeat of the Spanish Armada when in July the fire beacons along the coast from the west of Cornwall carry the warning to
Drake in Plymouth that the mighty Spanish fleet are coming up the Channel to invade England.
Four centuries
later, on the night of 2 July 1988 in the glittering candlelit splendour of the Wardroom at Drake the officers of the Royal Navy’s Western Approaches Command welcomed their Commander-in-Chief HM the Queen and HRH Prince Philip to a celebratory banquet marking the 400th anniversary
of the battle and the subsequent scattering of the Spaniards’ fleet and its destruction.
Prior to the feast
this panel had been set up in the Wardroom’s foyer in order for the royal guests to add their own stitches in history.
This was after Polly Hoskin the wife of the Commander of the Barracks and Drake’s NWT Centre organiser and Tom Mor had
been presented to them.
The introductions over and the story of the panel explained, the Queen and the Prince
were given specially gold-plated needles threaded with gold wool. With them, they carefully made some oblique Gobelin stitches
in the figure 1588 and afterwards signed the Visitors book.
HRH the Duchess of Gloucester’s stitches
are on this panel’s date too.
HM the Queen Mother’s is on the date of the 1619 panel. HRH the Princess Royal’s
on the Woolmen’s coat-of-arms, 1630 panel and HRH Prince Charles on the date of the 1642.
