Top News

The air is still and surroundings quiet as thousands watch by the shore before the eerie Cumbrian stillness is broken by an Orpheus jet engine for the first time in 21,677 days.

On that day, January 4th 1967, Donald Campbell took to Coniston Water in his jet hydroplane Bluebird K7 to try and break the 300mph on water. But it ended in tragedy. Donald crashed on his return run up the lake and died. He sunk to the bottom of the lake alongside the vessel.

However, in 2001 the Bluebird was recovered and put back together by a group of volunteers, led by Bill Smith, from The Bluebird Project to the point where she was able to run on Loch Fad in 2018.

The next big milestone was her return to a place where she had seen success and tragedy. Yesterday (May 11) she took to Coniston Water for the first time in front of a crowd of thousands that included Donald's daughter Gina Campbell and here we look at the story leading up to the momentous occasion and what happened.

The Bluebird was travelling at astonishing speeds of over 300mph when catastrophe struck on January 4th 1967. On that fateful day, Donald and K7 were trying to break the world water speed record. To achieve this, similar to the land speed record, they required two runs in opposite directions with an average calculated.

Bluebird had been designed to operate above 200mph, but not 300mph. Despite warnings, the boat was fitted with a large stabilising fin and a significantly more powerful Orpheus jet engine.

As Donald Campbell and K7 made their second run down Coniston Water in the Lake District, she lifted into the water, performed an almost 360-degree somersault, and hit the water.

The collision tore off the front of K7, and Donald was instantly killed when a part of the boat (reportedly the windscreen) decapitated him. K7 subsequently sank and remained undiscovered.

There was no such tragedy when the infamous vessel returned to Coniston waters yeterday. Speaking to the BBC about the experience, Gina, who was joined by Donald's nephew Don Wales, said she was "blown away" to see her father's boat back on Coniston Water, the place K7 and her father broke their first record in 1956.

She said: "What a day. To see the boat on the lake again, it's utterly magnificent. You can feel the love and the warmth of people here wanting to see it.

"As soon as it touched the water, there was a tear in my eye. It really was quite a moment and the minute's silence was very fitting. Without the restoration team and a lot of other people we wouldn't be here today.

Making the moment even more uniting was the pilot of K7, Dave Warby. Dave is the son of the late Ken Warby MBE who still held onto the world water speed record he set in 1978. So far, no-one else has gone beyond the 317.59mph speed he achieved nearly 50 years ago.

Whilst Bluebird K7's return to the water was a historic moment, it was reported that crowds were disappointed with how slowly she was going during her two afternoon runs, especially after there was an advertised start time of 10am.

The runs form part of a week long celebration of Bluebird K7, one in which the organisers said the runs would be weather dependent for safety reasons associated with running a jet powered hydroplane.

In a statement published on Facebook, the organisers accepted they should have given more updates, but stressed that safety had to come first.

They said: "We know announcements were difficult to hear at times and that updates should have been clearer and more regular.

"A huge amount of preparation went into this event over many months, but with a project of this scale there are still live checks, inspections and approvals that can only happen on the day under operational conditions. While the weather thankfully held, safety and technical validation had to come first."