Jet bombers raced coronation film across the Atlantic for same-day broadcast
To show Elizabeth II's 1953 coronation to Canadians the same day, the RAF flew BBC film across the Atlantic in Canberra jet bombers, the first non-stop flights between Britain and the Canadian mainland. At Goose Bay the reels were handed to a Canadian fighter jet for the final dash to Montreal.
Television was the story of the day. Cameras had been kept out of Westminster Abbey in 1937, when her parents were crowned, and Winston Churchill argued against letting them in this time. The Queen overruled him. Twenty-seven million people in Britain watched live on the BBC, many on sets bought or rented for the occasion, and television licences doubled from about one and a half million to three million. New relay links carried the broadcast live to France, Belgium, West Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands, an event counted as the birth of Eurovision. Worldwide, an estimated 277 million people watched.
The scramble across North America had comic touches. American networks NBC and CBS flew film home in slower propeller planes, while the struggling ABC simply picked up the Canadian signal via a station in Buffalo and beat both rivals to air at far lower cost. A Qantas airliner carried film to Sydney in a record 53 hours 28 minutes, even though Australia did not yet have full-time television.
Elizabeth had become queen at 25 when George VI died in February 1952, and the ceremony took 14 months to plan, with Prince Philip chairing the Coronation Commission in a break with precedent. To get used to the Imperial State Crown she wore it while working at her desk, taking tea and reading the paper. Norman Hartnell's white silk gown, refined through nine designs, was embroidered with emblems of Commonwealth nations, from the Tudor rose and Scottish thistle to the Canadian maple leaf and New Zealand's silver fern.
On 2 June 1953, about three million spectators lined London's streets, some camping overnight. The Queen rode in the Gold State Coach behind eight grey horses, with a hot water bottle tucked under the seat against the chill. The whole event was estimated to cost £1.57 million, including stands for 96,000 people along the route.
Source: Coronation of Elizabeth II
