Mega-yacht crews are well versed in the fine art of shiatsu massage, preparing the perfect langoustine salad and popping jeroboams of Cristal. It’s the little things, like saving the boat and its passengers in case of emergency, where they may sometimes falter. Thankfully, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that yacht owners are now turning to a truly venerable source of nautical knowledge for crew training: the Royal Navy.

With the sun long ago set on the British Empire, and no foreign threat menacing from the North Sea or across the channel, it seems that what was once the chief instrument of British power is now lending its expertise to helping train the crews of billionaires’ pleasure boats. Russian oilman-oligarch Roman Abramovich is one of the Royal Navy’s first customers. Through the liaison of private defense contractor Flagship Training, Ltd., the crew of Mr. Abramovich’s 285-foot yacht, Ecstasea, were trained by Royal Navy instructors in emergency response at her majesty’s base in Portsmouth.

It seems like a win-win situation for both the billionaires and the navy: the billionaires won’t suffer the embarrassment of explaining to their yachting party why exactly they will have to subsist on lichen while waiting for rescue vessels to save them from some craggy rocks off the Côte d’Azur, and a cash strapped Royal Navy can defray the cost of maybe 1% of one of their cruise missiles.

Of course, a few sticks in the mud, like the septuagenarian great-great-great-granddaughter of Lord Nelson, quoted in the Journal article, might find something ignominious about Britain’s rich naval heritage, with its legacy of victories over the Spanish Armada, Napoleon, the Nazis and most recently a flotilla of Argentinean rafts, being sullied by instructing a crew of bronzed, designer jeans-clad skippers on how to work the rudder on a billionaire’s party boat. Rule Britannia.