A Credit to the King

For 700 years, generations of royal swans have lived a fine life on the Thames, admired and fed by folk from Magna Carta Island to the Tower of London./-

During World War II, when some swans disappeared, there were ugly rumors that black-marketeers were conking them with clubs and selling them to shady restaurants where they were dished up as geese. Since then, under the increased vigilance of Thameside bobbies, the swans have sailed up & down, unafraid, wherever the whim took them.

Last week 66 of the swans sailed straight into a shower of bilge water disgorged by a ship and disgracefully dirtied their majestic plumage. The Vintners' swan master called for immediate action. Men in rowboats crowded the swans against the dock, fished them out one by one and hauled them away in vans to an R.S.P.C.A. clinic at Putney.

There experts cleansed the napping, hissing birds with a carefully blended mixture of soap and paraffin, taking great care not to destroy the natural oil in their feathers ("without it they would become waterlogged and sink"). Also used in the operation: brushes, sponges, sandpaper and a vacuum cleaner.

This week, as white as swans, the birds were back patrolling the Thames, once more a credit to the King, the Worshipful Company of Dyers and the Worshipful Company of Vintners.

/- Nowadays the King owns about 600 of the snow-white birds, while about 200 more are divided between the Worshipful Company of Dyers and the Worshipful Company of Vintners, on which the Crown bestowed gifts of swans in the 14th Century.

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