Once out of the nursery, the brothers were committed to the charge of a tutor selected for them by Queen Victoria—the Rev. John Neale Dalton—an admirable choice as events proved. From childhood Prince Albert Victor was devotedly attached to his younger brother, Prince George, who warmly reciprocated his affection, and their father wisely determined that the two boys should not be separated, but should enter the Royal Navy together as cadets. This was done in June 1877, Prince Albert Victor being then thirteen and a half and Prince George being some seventeen months younger. From the very first King Edward caused it to be understood that his sons were to enjoy no privileges on account of their rank, but were to be treated exactly like their fellow-cadets on board the Britannia, and made to learn their profession just as if they had been the sons of an ordinary private gentleman. The only exceptions were that Mr. Dalton attended the Princes as governor, and that, by special request of the Admiralty, their hammocks were slung behind a separate bulkhead in a space about 12 feet square. The young Princes spent two years in the Britannia, and both obtained a first-class in seamanship, entitling them to three months’ sea-time, and for general good conduct they obtained another three months.
The King thoroughly realised the benefit he had himself derived from the travels which he had undertaken as a youth, and therefore he arranged that his sons should spend three years in making a tour round the world, that their minds might be equipped by experience of men and cities, and that they might acquire an abiding impression of the extent and resources of the British Empire. Accordingly, the young Princes started in the Bacchante cruiser, Captain Lord Charles Scott, being again entrusted to the care of Mr. Dalton, who was afterwards made a Canon of Windsor. Canon Dalton, it is interesting to note, attended Prince George when, as Duke of Cornwall and York, and accompanied by the Duchess of Cornwall and York, he visited Australia to inaugurate the Federal Parliament, coming home by New Zealand and Canada.
The Princes kept careful diaries, and on their return they published a detailed account of their experiences. In the Bacchante, just as in the Britannia, they were treated exactly like other officers of their age and standing, except that they had a private cabin under the poop. They joined the gun-room mess, the members of which were granted a special allowance—an arrangement which had before been made when the Duke of Edinburgh began his naval career.
The Bacchante cruised to Gibraltar, Messina, Gibraltar again, Madeira, the West Indies, and home to Spithead on 3rd May. Then, on 19th July, the Princes rejoined the Bacchante for another cruise, first with the combined Channel and Reserve Squadrons to Bantry Bay and Vigo, and afterwards to Monte Video. The ship arrived off the Falkland Islands, but the Princes never landed, as had been arranged, for the troubles in South Africa had come to a head and the squadron was suddenly ordered to the Cape. The Bacchante reached Simons Bay on 16th February, and not many days later came the news of Majuba Hill and Laing’s Nek.
Early in April the Princes left for Australia, a voyage which was destined to be not without danger, for the Bacchante broke a portion of her steering-gear in a heavy gale. Temporary repairs were effected, and the vessel’s course was altered for Albany, in Western Australia. While the Bacchante was refitting, their Royal Highnesses visited the chief Australian ports in a passenger steamer called the Cathay, being everywhere received with enthusiastic loyalty. At last, rejoining the Bacchante, they said good-bye with regret to Australia, and on the voyage home they visited Fiji, Japan (where they were received with great ceremony by the Mikado), Shanghai, Hong-Kong, Singapore, and Colombo. Thence they proceeded to Suez, where they had the pleasure of meeting the great de Lesseps, and went in the Khedive’s yacht on a trip up to the First Cataract, as their parents had done in 1869.
A somewhat prolonged tour in the Holy Land followed, their Royal Highnesses visiting those sacred scenes which their father had visited before they were born. The Princes left Beirut for Athens on 7th May, and there they had the pleasure of meeting their uncle, the King of the Hellenes, and thence they went to Suda Bay to take part in a naval regatta, in which the Bacchante’s boats covered themselves with glory. By way of Sicily and Sardinia, the Princes passed on to Gibraltar, there renewing their old acquaintance with the famous Lord Napier of Magdala. It is a pathetic circumstance that both Lord Napier and, but two years afterwards, the Duke of Clarence and Avondale, were borne to the grave on the same gun-carriage.
At length the long voyage came to an end. Off Swanage the Osborne, with King Edward, Queen Alexandra, and the three young Princesses, met the Bacchante early in August. A visit to Queen Victoria at Osborne followed, and the two Princes were shortly afterwards confirmed in Whippingham Church by Archbishop Tait, who said to them in his address:—
“From this time forward your course of life, which has been hitherto unusually alike, must, in many respects, diverge. You will have different occupations and different training for an expected difference of position.”
