A YEAR and a month after the Armistice, HRH Prince Albert journeyed north to spend three days touring Glasgow and the industrial centres on the Clyde. He had come, said the Glasgow Herald, “if not in the piping times of peace, at least in the interesting transition stage between the end of world conflict and the beginning of a new era”. The Prince visited Renfrew, Paisley and Clydebank, and in Glasgow he took in Parkhead Forge, the Stock Exchange, the Royal Exchange, the City Chambers, Hydepark locomotive works and, in Possilpark, workshops for disabled sailors and soldiers. At Ralston Hospital for Paraplegics he wandered freely among the 50 patients, “by whom his cheerful words of enquiry were greatly appreciated.” The Prince had, of course, served his country during the war, in the RAF and in the Navy; he had been a Midshipman aboard HMS Collingwood during the Battle of Jutland. At the John Brown shipyard (above) he took a special interest in the battle-cruiser HMS Hood as it lay in the fitting-out basin. Hood was, in the Herald’s words, “undoubtedly the greatest navel vessel yet designed” The Prince was escorted across the ship by Commander McKinnon, and the two men engaged in deep conversation. Hood was sunk by the Bismark in the Denmark Strait in May 1941. The Navy hunted down the Bismark a few days later, and avenged the loss of Hood.