BLUEBIRD REBORN
WHEN it was hauled from Coniston Water 17 years ago, it was a pile of weed-encrusted wreckage.
Today, after a painstaking restoration project, Donald Campbell’s world recordbreaking jet hydroplane Bluebird K7 is finally ready to take to the water again.
Bluebird spent 34 years beneath 150ft of water after Campbell, 45, died when it flipped and broke in half on Coniston on January 4, 1967.
His final moments were seared into the national consciousness, having been captured on a chilling few seconds of film, in stark photographs, and in the haunting recording of his last words: ‘She’s tramping, the water’s not good… I can’t see much… I’m going… I’m on my back… I’m gone.’
Today the rebuilt craft will be launched on Loch Fad on the Isle of Bute. Campbell’s daughter Gina Campbell said: ‘It will be quite an extraordinary feeling for me to see this boat after so many years. I don’t know
‘I don’t know how my heart will react’
quite how my heart will react. I’m sure it will be with great jubilation because the restoration project has been an amazing feat and I’m sure she will look absolutely fantastic.
‘But for me, it’s going to be bittersweet to see somebody else sitting in the pilot’s seat.’
Self-made millionaire and diving enthusiast Bill Smith, the engineer who salvaged Bluebird, has more practical matters on his mind.
Yesterday he said: ‘As long it doesn’t fill up with water or sink, I’ll be pleased. I can’t get too emotional – I’m looking at it from an engineering point of view.
‘We have never launched the boat before. We’re in Scotland for two weeks and we will learn how to launch it, how to fuel it, how to use the fire extinguishers and the radio. It will be driven once we’re happy and confident we can operate it safely.’
The restoration project, involving 14 engineers, began with five years of taking Bluebird apart and cataloguing its parts. About 98 per cent of the original materials have been saved or melted down and welded back on to the boat in other forms.
Mr Smith, 51, the joint leader of the restoration project, said: ‘We took it apart back down to the nuts and bolts, to every component part. Then every part has been cleaned, repaired and put back together. It’s been completely without compromise, we wouldn’t use the wrong material, we wouldn’t use the wrong screw, we wouldn’t use the wrong gauge. It is absolutely as it ought to be.’
The parts that could not be used were so few they ‘fill three shoeboxes’, he added. The original dashboard was never found, and the sponsons – rear-mounted floats that broke off when Bluebird crashed – were retrieved at the time and scrapped.
Campbell set a world water speed record of 276.33mph in Bluebird in at Lake Dumbleyung in Australia three years before his death. The current record is 318mph.
While Bluebird’s engines will again be heard roaring soon, there will be no attempt to break any records. Miss Campbell said: ‘After 17 years of really hard work and dedication wouldn’t it just be too sad and too silly if, by some dreadful fact, something went wrong?’
Initially, Bluebird will simply be dropped by a cradle to float in the water. ‘It will be driven once we’re happy and confident we can operate it safely,’ Mr Smith said.