year Prince William married the Princess Mary of England, in whose honor the yacht was christened.
A portrait is here given of this yacht, lying off Delft Haven. On her high stern may be seen the arms of the Prince of Orange, and on her flag-staff the standard she carried when William of Orange came from Holland to become the King of England, bearing the motto: "The Protestant Relig: and the Liberty of England"; also the motto of the house of Nassau: "Je Maintiendray."
The admirals of the seventy ships that composed the fleet that escorted William to Torbay, where he landed November 5, 1688, carried a red flag with the first of these mottoes inscribed upon it.
In February, 1689, a number of yachts,—the Princess Mary among them,—were sent to Holland with a fleet under command of Lord Admiral Herbert to escort Queen Mary to England. An illustration of her landing at the Isle of Thanet, February 22, 1689, is here given, showing three of the royal yachts in the foreground saluting, the smoke from the guns somewhat obscuring their hulls.
This distinction should have been enough for any yacht; and the Princess Mary, about twelve years old,—although some writers state her age to have been, then, more than half a century,—might well have retired with honor. But her career was not ended; in reality it had only begun.
One warm afternoon late in the spring of 1856, the rays of the declining sun flooded the old Admiralty Court at Westminster and embellished the
