It’s half-speed ahead at 80 for born-again Bluebird
WITH its revolutionary design and record breaking speeds Sir Malcolm Campbell’s Bluebird K3 speedboat was the stuff of adventures.
Motivated by a very British desire to cock a snook at the Americans, Campbell set and then broke the water speed record not just once, but three times during the late Thirties.
Now – 80 years on – Bluebird is back on the water, following a painstaking project by Karl Foulkes-halbard, an avid collector, to restore the hydroplane to her former glory.
Yesterday Campbell’s famous craft hit speeds of 52mph as part of a series of test runs on Bewl Water, in Kent.
Not quite the 130.91mph reached by the speedboat on Aug 17, 1938, but impressive all the same for a craft that just a few years ago was lying in bits on a workshop floor.
“It’s a pretty wild experience, even at just over 50mph.” said Mr Foulkeshalbard, who piloted the boat on its test runs. “I can only take my hat off to Sir Malcolm Campbell, who was doing more than double those speeds. He was an exceptionally courageous man and an extremely skilful pilot.”
Bluebird K3 was bought in 1988 by Mr Foulkes-halbard’s father Paul.
A two-decade long programme of restoration involved stripping the boat to its bare frame and rebuilding all of its mechanical parts, at a cost of tens of thousands of pounds.
As the Bluebird K3 finally took to the water again yesterday it conjured up memories of Campbell’s single-minded attempts at smashing the existing record, set in 1932 by the American power boat racer Garfield Wood. Campbell, who had already set a land speed record of 301mph in his 2,300 horsepower Bluebird car, commissioned Fred Cooper of Saunders Roe to design a small hydroplane powered by the same Rolls-royce R engine.
On Sept 1 1937, at Lago Maggiore, on the Swiss-italian border, Sir Malcolm’s K3 set a record of 126.32mph. The following day he reached 129.5mph. It took another year for Sir Malcolm to once again smash his own record by breaking through the 130mph barrier, this time on Lake Hallwil, Switzerland.
Calculating that the boat would not be capable of higher speeds Campbell retired her for good. His son Donald followed in his footsteps, setting numerous land and water speed records, until he was killed on Coniston Water in the Lake District as he attempted to reach 300mph on Jan 4, 1967.
Mr Foulkes-halbard plans to take the Bluebird back to Switzerland, the set- ting for her record attempts. “We’re not about trying to replicate her record breaking speeds,” he said. “She doesn’t need to prove anything. We just want people to be able to see a bit of history in action.”