The top secret Royal shipwreck disaster that could never reach the public: How Duke and Duchess of Windsor left staff behind to save dogs and jewels during covered-up fiasco that nearly killed a King

The knock on the door came at 4am, accompanied by a terrible grinding noise. The vast luxury yacht – one of the most expensive ever built – had hit a coral reef, and crashing Atlantic waves were pushing the hull further on to the rocks. It was time to abandon ship.

The hurriedly-dressed Duke and Duchess of Windsor clambered down a rope-ladder into a getaway launch, abandoning their valet and maid to their fate – but making sure that the duke’s strong-boxes, valise, and the Duchess’s jewel-case were transferred to the launch. Three Cairn terriers were handed down to join their master and mistress.

The ex-King of England had been shipwrecked.

‘Dawn came, and the launch was headed in the direction of an island. But nobody knew what the island was – we were lost,’ recalled the royal couple’s secretary Jean Drewes. ‘The surf was too violent for any possible landing attempt.

‘The Duke looked terribly worried and the Duchess was frightened – I had never seen her with less concern about her appearance – she had a net over her hair and was wearing no make-up.’

Their ordeal had only just begun.

The Duke, appointed governor of the archipelago of 700 islands just months before, was taking the trip to familiarise himself with the sprawling territory he’d been sent to administer. 

Taking a brief respite from his official duties as Governor of the Bahamas, the Duke of Windsor is shown here at a polo match for the benefit of the Bahamas Red Cross

The shipwrecked boat, which was one of the most expensive built at the time, belonged to the General Motors boss Alfred P. Sloan (sitting in car), who’d grown bored with sailing after a single voyage

Typically he refused a navy vessel or official watercraft to make the journey, but instead did his rounds in the 236-foot Rene – complete with state dining room, drawing room with fireplace, liveried servants, and a crew of 46.

The boat, one of the most expensive built at the time, belonged to the Duke’s chum Alfred P. Sloan, boss of General Motors, who’d grown bored with sailing after a single voyage.

What started out as a jolly now looked life-threatening. It would appear that nobody knew where they were, and more disturbingly, the waters surrounding the launch were filled with sharks. The search for a way through the barrier reef went on and on as the sun came up and scorched the people on board the tiny launch.

The captain of the Rene radioed an SOS message and a Bahamas Airways seaplane was launched to find the castaways. However, the surf was too violent for it to land and it had to turn back.

‘We were afloat in the launch for five-and-a-half hours – there was constant danger of the boat capsizing with such an overload and with the heavy surf,’ recalled Jean.

‘There was a terrible worry about the limited petrol supply, and those hungry sharks were hovering just below the surface. The outer reefs prevented us from landing on the island, which in any case appeared uninhabited and completely barren.’

A passing fisherman shouted that they were heading the wrong way to reach land and the launch was turned around and finally made shore at Great Abaco Island, 100 miles from the royal couple’s port of embarkation at Nassau.

The captain of the Rene radioed an SOS message, and a Bahamas Airways seaplane was launched to find the castaways. However, the surf was too violent for it to land and it had to turn back

The evidence points to gross incompetence on the part of the Rene’s captain and crew, who should never have let their valuable cargo float off without the first clue of where they were going

What started out as a jolly now looked life-threatening. It would appear that nobody knew where they were, and more disturbingly, the waters surrounding the launch were filled with sharks

A passing fisherman shouted that they were heading the wrong way to reach land, and the launch was turned around and finally made shore at Great Abaco Island, 100 miles from the royal couple’s port of embarkation at Nassau

The Rene was able to re-float with the tide and, not too badly damaged, caught up with their royal guests and took them home. But the evidence points to gross incompetence on the part of the Rene’s captain and crew, who should never have let their valuable cargo float off without the first clue of where they were going. ‘Too many shipboard experts had jumbled up the course we should have taken,’ observed Jean Drewes tartly.

That the former king – who’d so spectacularly quit the throne less than five years earlier – came close to being fed to the sharks remained top secret. Back in Britain his younger brother Bertie, now King George VI, was present as five high-explosive bombs shattered Buckingham Palace. His next brother Harry, the Duke of Gloucester, had been blown up on a military mission in France. His youngest brother George, the Duke of Kent, was soon to lose his life in an RAF mission to Iceland.

It wouldn’t have done the beleaguered nation’s wartime morale much good to learn that, as Britain endured the Blitz, their former king was swanning round the sun-soaked islands of the Bahamas on an oversized gin-palace, crewed by incompetent sailors.

Fascinatingly, though the Duke could so easily have lost his life, the scary event didn’t make a single paragraph in any newspaper or radio news bulletin and does not figure in his official biography. Wartime censors took care of that.

One thing’s for certain – Wallis Windsor was never, ever to be seen again in a hair-net and without makeup. She’d rather have died in the jaws of a shark.