Girl-friend visits Prince’s ship

Press, 7 February 1986, Page 6

Girl-friend visits Prince’s ship

NZPA-PA London Sarah Ferguson, the latest lady in Prince Andrew’s life, paid him a very public visit yesterday — fuelling speculation in the British Press that the couple may be about to announce their engagement.

Accompanied by her close friend, the Princess of Wales, Miss Ferguson, aged 26, appeared at the Prince’s ship, the frigate Brazen, which is in Lon-

don on a four-day goodwill visit Prince Andrew kissed the Princess and her son, Prince William, but was careful to show no public gesture of affection to his flame-haired girl-friend. But she was walking beside him when he escorted the party off the ship after their 65-minute tour.

Buckingham Palace, in what appeared a bid to dampen down speculation, was anxious to emphasise

Miss Ferguson’s “very close” friendship with Princess Diana.

But her accompanying the Princess on a visit being recorded for posterity by dozens of newspaper photographers — and whispers that the Queen approves of Andrew’s latest love — will inevitably mean talk of marriage. Sarah, the daughter of Prince Charles’s polo manager, Major Ronald Ferguson, is qualified to

be a royal bride. Because of her family’s links with Buckingham Palace, she learned to mix easily with royalty at an early age. In June Andrew escorted her to Ascot, where they were seen strolling around the Royal Enclosure. Speculation about their future has increased since. It peaked with Andrew’s invitation to her to visit Sandringham for the Royal Family’s New

Year celebrations. Miss Ferguson, a sales executive with a printing firm, was brought up on her family’s £2miliion ($5.3 million) estate near Basingstoke, Hampshire. Her family is said to be directly descended from the merry monarch, Charles 11. She is related to the Royal Family through her father, who is a cousin of Princess Alice, Duchess of Gloucester, the widow of the Queen’s uncle.