DARE DEVIL'S DEATH ON THE LOCH
How a publicity-shy pilot in a jet boat became the fastest man on water... before tragedy struck on a choppy Loch Ness
THE gaggle of excited spectators lining Temple Pier on Loch Ness could sense history in the making as John Cobb squeezed his giant frame into the cockpit of his jet-powered speedboat, pulled his goggles down over his leather flying cap and gave a final thumbs-up.
Moments later, the whine of the engine shattered the late September tranquility as Cobb set off in pursuit of glory. Less than a minute later, those same crowds – including his wife – would cry out in horror as they watched him die at more than 200mph.
Shortly after midday on September 29, 1952, his 31ft Crusader boat, propelled by an engine powerful enough to fly a jet airliner, hit the wake of a support vessel, nose-dived into the black waters of the loch and disintegrated.
Cobb was found floating among the wreckage, having suffered a catastrophic heart attack brought on by the shock of the crash. He was dead before they brought him ashore.
His name is now virtually unknown, yet his death 66 years ago today made international headlines. A Pathé newsreel carried footage of the fatal accident to the four corners of the Commonwealth and recalled that the Queen Mother had visited Cobb’s team based at the Drumnadrochit Hotel in the days leading up to the tragedy.
This was, of course, the pre-space age heyday of speed, when those who broke records on land and water were feted as household names. Their aim was not only to be the fastest on Earth but also to prove the supremacy of British technology – even if it cost them their life.
Such high stakes were partly what drew the crowds, but those who undertook such lethal pastimes were driven by the same philosophy that spawned Arctic explorers and Everest adventurers. They did it because it was there. They did it, ironically, because it made them feel most alive.
Such a man was John Cobb. He was part of a wealthy elite who spent decades – and a small fortune – jockeying for the title of fastest man on the planet. Henry Segrave, George Eyston, JG Parry-Thomas, Cobb and Sir Malcolm Campbell, father of Donald, were all once internationally famous. But the need for speed would claim nearly every one. Only Sir Malcolm would die in his bed.
On the day Cobb died on Loch Ness, he set an unofficial speed record of 206mph. Even when Donald Campbell broke the official record three years later, he did not achieve the same speed as Cobb’s final run.
But while Campbell, who would lose his life in similar circumstances when Bluebird K7 crashed on Coniston Water 15 years later, is remembered and still applauded, few know of the shy and retiring speed king who blazed a record-breaking trail on land and water which, until his untimely death, left his more glamorous rival following in his wake.
Adrian Shine, founder of the Loch Ness Project, who has located the wreck site of the Crusader, said this week: ‘In many ways, John Cobb deserves better recognition than he has received.
‘He is not as well-known as are other ill-fated water speed aces but he was a modest man who shunned publicity – he was known as the gallant gentleman.’
At the time Cobb arrived in Scotland to have a crack at becoming the fastest man on water, this former Second World War pilot already held the land speed record – set at 394mph on Utah’s Bonneville Salt Flats in his teardrop-shaped Railton Special, powered by twin aeroplane engines. He came north with a quiet determination to ‘unify’ the two great titles, like a champion prize fighter.
IN the weeks before the record attempt, the people of Glen Urquhart grew to love this taciturn bear of a man. Urbane and polite to a fault, he could have made his run on the day before his death, but that was a Sunday and he did not want to offend the religious sensibilities of local people, an act of forbearance that earned him the undying respect of the community.
It is deeply ironic, therefore, that an act of impatience the following day should prove to be his undoing.
As a child Cobb, born in Esher, Surrey, in 1899, was fascinated by motor sport. He grew up near the Brooklands racing circuit and would spend hours watching drivers on the track.
Motorsport historian David Tremayne described him as ‘the least likely of speed kings’. Donald Campbell, like his father before him, regarded publicity as ‘oxygen’ but Cobb, 53, is as anonymous in death as he was in life – buried in his native county, in a grave that does not even have a headstone.
‘The fame of men like Campbell was anathema to him and, because of that, his greatest deeds were unfairly eclipsed,’ said Mr Tremayne. ‘As a boy, he cycled to Brooklands track and impressed the famous drivers of the day. When his turn finally came behind the wheel, he was a master of machinery, a prototype of today’s technocrats.
‘None of his three world land speed records – 350.20mph in 1938, 369.70mph in 1939, 394.19mph in 1947 – was achieved by simply planting his right foot and holding the wheel. He developed a telepathic ability to sense just what state his rubber was in at each mile, and such hyperalertness was vital.’
He added: ‘He was the perfect development driver and the first man to travel at more than 400mph. Yet he received no knighthood and was not lionised, as were the Campbells. Attention embarrassed him and a lack of recognition did not trouble Cobb – a man of few words. He let his deeds do the talking.’
Having conquered the land, Cobb turned his attention to water and chose the vast, deep expanse of Loch Ness. According to Mr Shine, this was his first mistake.
He said: ‘The basic problem with Loch Ness was that it looked really good for speed record attempts – it’s long and straight. Unfortunately, it’s long and straight in line with our prevailing winds, hence it’s a trap.
‘There has never been another attempt there since Cobb’s. You do not get enough calms and it has to be absolutely flat calm for a record attempt, otherwise it’s like hitting concrete bars.’
Portsmouth-based engineering firm Vosper was commissioned to create the world’s first purpose-built jet boat, costing £15,000. Money was no object to Cobb, as managing director of Anning, Chadwick and Kiver, his family’s international fur brokerage.
The red and silver super-boat was constructed of birchwood but the nose was made from ultra-light aluminium, regarded as vital for ‘skimming’. The turbo-charged engine, known as the Ghost, was modified by the Swedish Air Force from a power unit used on De Havilland Comet airliners, which had taken off for the first time in the 1940s.
DURING test runs Cobb unofficially broke the 178mph record of American Stanley Sayres, but problems were emerging and Cobb said steering Crusader was ‘like driving a London bus without tyres’.
The designer, Commander Peter Du Cane, suggested the record attempt be delayed for repairs and strengthening of the nose cone.
Mr Shine said: ‘Vospers undertook to take Crusader down south at their own expense and strengthen that component. Cobb said he didn’t have time for that and he signed a waiver and agreed not to go over 180mph, which would still have given him the record.’
On the Monday, the team rose at 4am and headed to the loch. The water was too choppy and they retired to the hotel.
Cobb left a support vessel, the Maureen, on the loch. A few hours later, the water was calm and Cobb returned. The only disturbance was the wake of the Maureen. Cobb was furious and, in spite of being asked
to delay, he decided to go ahead. He raced to the one-mile marker, but as he turned to make the final run – and shatter the record – he encountered the ripple effect of the Maureen’s wake.
‘The flare was fired and he came into the measured mile at well over 200mph – it’s suggested as high as 240mph at one point – and about half-way down the course he hit three waves which, to the watchers on the hillside, sounded like pistol shots,’ said Mr Shine. ‘And, at the very end of the run under the last measured milepost he took his foot off the throttle, slowed down, then reapplied it and as the nose dipped down into the water the whole thing exploded as the water came into it and burst it apart.
‘Waiting just a bit longer, maybe only half-an-hour, until the waters were flat calm again might have made all the difference and avoided this tragedy.’
On the pier, the jubilant looks drained from onlookers’ faces as they heard the roar of the superfast engine die and Crusader disappear. Eyewitness Jan Peterson, 71, who was then aged 15, says: ‘My mother and I watched in horror from the banks of the loch. Everyone on shore was shocked. There was stunned silence, then exclamations of horror.
‘All that was visible on the lake was floating debris. Boats raced to the scene and we waited anxiously to hear he had been found alive.
‘Unfortunately, that was not to be. I can still feel the shock and emotion of that terrible day. To our untrained eyes, the lake had looked so calm and beautiful, the perfect setting for a sporting triumph.’
Rescuers reached Cobb’s body floating on the surface amid the debris of the flimsy craft. His wife Vera, who would live on until 2007, had watched the entire disaster unfold and was inconsolable.
The national shock was palpable. When Cobb’s coffin was brought to Inverness and transported to the train station, the streets of the Highland capital ‘were lined with people’ paying their respects. Later, the timekeeper’s log showed Cobb had reached 206mph, making him, unofficially, the world’s fastest man on water. But Stanley Sayers’s official record of 178.48mph remained intact until 1955, when Donald Campbell’s Bluebird reached 202.32mph on Ullswater in the Lake District.
NOT until July 2002 was some of the wrecked Crusader recovered from the bottom of the loch by a team led by Mr Shine, who were actually trying to establish the existence of the Loch Ness monster at the time.
The wreck site 650ft down is protected and, unlike Campbell’s Bluebird K7 which was recovered from Coniston and restored and was seen powering along the surface of Loch Fad off the Isle of Bute last month, there are no plans to raise Crusader’s remains.
Yet there is one last twist to Cobb’s failed record attempt, which inspired at least one child to follow in his footsteps. Sir Richard Noble, the Edinburgh-born racer who held the land speed record of 633mph between 1983 and 1997, was five when he saw Crusader on a family trip to Loch Ness, a few days before Cobb was killed.
Mr Noble has said: ‘It led to a fascination with the land speed record. Cobb was far more inspirational to me than Campbell, who was great at running the PR, but Cobb was a quiet man. His quiet industry and professionalism spoke volumes. That day on the banks of Loch Ness changed my life.’
Today, the water speed record stands at 317.596mph, set on October 8, 1978, by Australian Ken Warby at the Blowering Dam in New South Wales, in his boat Spirit of Australia. There have been two failed attempts to better it in the intervening years, which have both ended in tragedy.
Cobb’s death may have consigned him to near obscurity, but the people of Glen Urquhart will never forget their gentle giant. In the Loch Ness Centre, there is a display devoted to the racer with a model of the Crusader.
And nearby, residents erected a cairn ‘to the memory of a gallant gentleman by the people of Glen Urquhart – Urram do’n treun agus do’n iriosal – Honour to the valiant, and to the humble’.