R Perkins Is Brought In To Provide A Royal Service The Spirit of Chartwell is a hotel barge owned and operated by the Magna Carta Steamship Company for luxury cruises along the River Thames. In late 2011 she was selected to be the royal barge as part of Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations, and carried the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh in a flotilla of more than 1,000 vessels during the Thames Diamond Jubilee Pageant on 3 June 2012.
1. A Vessel Fit For A Queen
The ship was bought at an auction sale a few years ago, with the intention to turning it into a hotel ship for sight seeing tours on the river Thames. However before that could be considered it had to literally be made fit for a Queen! In very late June 2012 we received a call from a very anonimous ship renovator , The ship was under going a massive refit , but no one had thought of getting the refrigeration and air conditioning equipment checked and maintained.
2. Flexible Service
Even for a new customer we will always do our utmost to help and so a meeting was arranged for the next morning where our Service Manager Eric Lee visited the ship and carried out a full assessment and report of the works that would be required to make the ships Air conditioning and refrigeration equipment up and running perfectly and in time for the royal pageant.
3. Keeping Her Majesty Looking Cool
Our engineers wasted no time in setting to work on getting the large Carrier chillers to run cleanly and efficiently and rectify the many faults that had occurred over years , which was made all the more difficult as the units were dutch made and manufactured and hence all of the manuals and controllers were in Dutch . Never the less the guys perceived and soon had the chillers working beautifully.
4. An Unnamed Engineer
The thousands of people that lined the route of the Queen Elizabeth II ‘s Diamond Jubilee were completely unaware of the long hours of handwork by R Perkins & Sons that had gone into ensuring that The Queen and Duke of Edinburgh were able to relax in their air conditioned cabin and that all of the refrigeration and air condition equipment on the ship ran perfectly during and after the pageant.