Donald Campbell: Speed King

'Memory is the storeroom of the mind.

'A dusty attic of experience stacked with knowledge.

'Sometimes useless, sometimes priceless.

'Once in a while, we must lift the shades, dust off the years

'and, with our souvenirs, seek to recapture the past,

'for there lies reason for the present and vision for the future.'

NEWSREEL: 'World speed record holder, Donald Campbell,

'has announced that he is to attempt raising his own record over 300 miles per hour.

'The attempt will be made at Coniston in Lancashire, where Mr Campbell,

'and his father Sir Malcolm, have made several attempts in the past.'

Donald put on his helmet, climbed into the cockpit,

pulled the canopy over his head.

But on this particular morning, he had a strange look on his face

as he looked up to the pier at me.

'Well, the travelling quickly, in itself, of course, is nothing.

'It's the challenge.

'It's like a mountain, it has to be climbed

'and a song that has to be written.

'Once mankind ceases to have the desire to do these things

'and progress, well, he'll stagnate and die very rapidly.'

You could see it in the distance,

we could hear the engine roar as it accelerated.

See the plume of spray.

MUFFLED SPEECH OVER RADIO

Then almost in sort of slow motion, you know,

it slowly began to rise out of the water.

This is the terrible part about trying to break a record, you see -

once you start, you're past the point of no return.

And there's no going back.

-ECHOES:

-Once you start, you're past the point of no return...

Past the point of no return...

You see this fantastic boat just become an aeroplane,

almost as if she's soaring off into the wild blue yonder.

VOICES EXCLAIM IN HORROR

Oh! Oh, oh God! He's blown up.

He's sort of cartwheeling over and over.

What a terrible disaster.

The 1920s and '30s was the first great age of speed.

On land, sea and in the air,

men could travel at speeds previously undreamt of.

The daredevils who risked their lives to reach new milestones

were seen as heroes.

Britain's Malcolm Campbell was one of the greatest heroes of them all.

In 1935, he faced his toughest challenge.

NEWSREEL: 'Speed, 300 miles an hour, five miles a minute,

'one mile in 12 seconds -

'an achievement which baulks the imagination and beggars description.'

Breaking the 300 mile an hour barrier at Bonneville

was Campbell's greatest achievement as a driver.

It was his ninth land speed record.

In the 1930s, his speed dreams found a new focus.

He set four water speed records.

Everything he touched turned to gold.

Watching triumph after seamless triumph

was Malcolm Campbell's greatest admirer, his son Donald.

That's no good, Donald, you've got the points all wrong.

I'm afraid you've broken this, old chap.

I think the truth was his father was an awful old bully

and a very arrogant, difficult, probably not very nice man.

This is all very well, Dad,

but when are you going to teach me to drive a car?

Oh, when you get old enough, old boy. You can't run your trains yet.

Donald had a very neglected childhood,

but always he had this great hero to live up to.

When you grow up with some great heroic father figure

who doesn't really take much notice of you,

things do tend to go a bit wrong, I think,

and I think they went wrong for Donald.

He was always trying to appease this father figure.

It's a bit like something out of Hamlet.

He's haunted by his father's ghost.

NEWSREEL: 'British Movietone News mourns the death of Sir Malcolm Campbell.

'Malcolm Campbell was of the race of pioneers.

'In another age, he might have discovered continents,

'but in the 20th century,

'it was speed which attracted his adventurous spirit.

'Farewell to a great patriot.'

When his father died,

I think that put steel into Donald's heart and mind.

He was absolutely determined

that he was going to do things better than his father,

or go faster and achieve at least as much or more.

He had to show the ghost of his father

that he was as much a man as his father was.

Donald Campbell had never tried record breaking before, but in 1949,

in his father's old boat, he took to the water for the first time.

'A son takes up his father's mantle.

'Donald, son of Sir Malcolm Campbell,

'is going to defend the water speed record for Britain.'

He would always talk about getting the records for Britain,

it was never talked about just for himself.

I've heard him say many times,

"To be born British was to win the first prize in life."

But Britain in the late 1940s

was no longer the greatest and fastest nation on Earth.

The country had been ravaged by war

and a new supercharged superpower had emerged...

..the Americans who were after Britain's, and Sir Malcolm's,

water speed record.

Donald Campbell felt compelled to fight for his father's,

and his country's, honour.

I believe these records are very definitely symbolic

of a nation's ability technically and indeed of their virility.

Donald Campbell's right-hand man

was his father's chief mechanic, Leo Villa.

But their first joint record attempt ended disastrously.

In 1950, Sir Malcolm's old boat sank.

The failure spurred Donald Campbell on.

He gave up his job, mortgaged his house

and poured his savings into a brand-new boat.

Bluebird K7, as it was called,

was designed by a gifted engineer called Ken Norris.

He thought outside the box.

There was always something possible that others hadn't thought of.

What Ken Norris and his brother, Lew, dreamt up was not a boat,

but something truly innovative - a jet-powered hydroplane.

Water is 600 times more dense than air,

so if you wanted to travel fast over it,

you've got to really get as much out of the water as possible,

so you've got to design a craft

that's going to ride the water, just skim the top of the water.

Most racing boats were driven by propellers,

but the blades created drag.

Ken Norris's solution was to fit a jet engine

which would blast Bluebird along at over 200 miles an hour.

By 1955, Bluebird K7 was ready for a crack at the world record.

'If you're going to succeed,

'you've got to put what you're trying to do first,

'way before your own comfort, way before your own pleasure

'and way before your own family considerations.

'You have got to.

-ECHOES:

-'Put what you're trying to do first... First... First...

Donald Campbell had inherited his father's obsessive nature.

Everything would be sacrificed in pursuit of record breaking.

I don't remember when I first met my father.

Isn't that a funny word - "met my father"?

I don't remember that specific moment.

I can only refer to what I was told,

that my mother was unfaithful to my father

and he caught her being unfaithful,

and he packed his bags and left her there and then.

I don't believe my father probably saw me

for at least three to four years.

The enormity of what he did, I didn't grasp for a long time.

I never quite appreciated the magnitude, the fame,

the risks, the whole shebang that went with it.

NEWSREEL: 'Onlookers lining the shores of Lake Ullswater,

'see 34-year-old Donald Campbell take out his turbojet Bluebird

'on what is only meant to be a trial run with an old engine.'

In 1955, I was in hospital - I swallowed a hairgrip.

And I was recovering when someone came down to me and said,

"Your father's just broken the world water speed record."

ENGINE SCREAMS

'And he's done it with an average speed of 202.32.

'A magnificent success.'

So that was the first time I knew anything about water speed records.

'Congratulations from the family and chief mechanic, Leo Villa.

'Now the big question - what will Bluebird do

'when she's flat out with her new engine? We'll be seeing.'

The first record was a big thing because a lot of us

had put massive time and effort and thought into the whole thing,

and we just did not know that it was going to work.

And when it did, it was a big whoopee moment.

This was what we could do.

A small country, just recovering from wartime privations,

could come up with something that could beat the rest of the world,

and particularly the Americans.

In the 1950s, Billy Butlin, the holiday camp entrepreneur,

offered a big cash prize for each new record.

Year after year, Campbell pushed his speed higher and claimed his reward.

Bluebird K7 notched up record after record.

The British-built speed machine

became the most iconic racing boat in the world.

She starts off sort of a bit like a blue whale, you know,

lumbering to sort of get up onto the plane,

and then once she just gets up onto her three pins and goes...

..well, it's almost like a bullet out of the gun.

I just think she's got very elegant, feminine sort of shapes.

Everything's rounded and curvaceous and there's no sharp angles.

She's so beautifully balanced

and on water, of course, in her own environment,

she's just absolutely out of this world.

By the late 1950s, Donald Campbell was a household name.

He was just the kind of swashbuckling hero

that 1950s' Britain admired.

A young Queen was on the throne,

people yearned for trailblazers who could shape the new Elizabethan age.

'At Buckingham Palace Donald Campbell,

'seen with his mother and Leo Villa, receive the CBE.

'He hopes to set a new water speed record this year.'

The late 1950s were Campbell's glory years.

He was rich, he was famous and, after a second failed marriage,

he was also single.

As one of Britain's most eligible bachelors,

there was no shortage of female admirers.

My father was a charming, attractive man and, you know,

I think he was a lady's man.

He had a twinkle in his eye.

He was a young, healthy man, for goodness sake,

so he had a nice selection of lady friends.

And I suppose, when I first met Tonia,

I suppose I just thought she was another one of his girlfriends.

# The autumn leaves

# Drift by the window

# The autumn leaves... #

I sing about love and I know what I'm singing about.

His eyes, they were blue like the sky in the south of France...

..and they were very meaningful.

You can really see what he was thinking.

The first time we met, I knew exactly what he was thinking.

# ..Since you went away... #

I'm very proud that this fantastic man loved me, and he did.

I feel he still does.

I'm still his wife.

I never became his widow, I'm still his wife.

That's the way the cookie crumble.

# ..Since you went away... #

It was very fast this romance.

He proposed to me three days after he met me.

The wedding day came and I wore bluebirds in my hair.

He said, "What a sweet, sweet thought,"

then took my hand and kissed it.

Yeah.

# ..Autumn leaves start to fa-all. #

By 1959, Donald Campbell had six world records.

On water, he had already outshone his father,

but Sir Malcolm's reputation had been forged on land.

If Donald Campbell wanted to emulate his father,

he needed a land speed record too.

'While bad weather at Coniston

'has been holding up his record attempt on water,

'Donald Campbell has been considering world records on land.

'With Leo Villa and the two designers,

'he inspects a model of Bluebird 2.'

Well, I refer to this one as my baby, I was part of its conception.

I saw it born

and it was a big part of my life for two-and-a-half, three years.

It gives me shivers to touch her now, still.

It is a very, very beautiful being.

The land speed record stood at 394 miles an hour.

Ken Norris designed a car that would go far beyond that, to 500 or more.

CN7, as it was called,

was designed like a plane with an interlocking aluminium fuselage

which gave the car enormous strength.

She was powered by a 5,000 horsepower jet turbine engine.

Harnessing this power demanded cutting edge engineering.

When we were designing the car,

the regulations were, for the land speed record,

that you had to drive the power through the wheels.

You've got to control them in some way and, at the same time,

you have massive aerodynamic problems because a car can lift

and flip off and take off just as easily as a boat could.

At the cost of half a million pounds CN7 was a hugely expensive car,

but all the big guns of British industry

lined up to bankroll the project.

They were keen to associate themselves with the Campbell name

and bask in the glory of a new land speed record for Britain.

And things started to look good,

particularly when the skin started to go on,

and then you began to feel,

"Yep, this is really going to look as we hoped it would."

After four years of design and development,

the 30-foot, 4-tonne speed machine

was ready for its first public outing.

ENGINES WHINE

NEWSREEL: 'That sound could mean a new land speed record for Britain.'

TONIA: The car's a magnificent animal, of course a female one

because his cars and his boats, the Bluebirds, were female.

When it started, it always starts slow

and then it just goes, you know, goes.

That tremendous power, it's sensuous, it really is sensuous.

I used to get terribly excited.

By 1960, the most sophisticated car on Earth

was ready for a crack at the world land speed record.

TV: 'Free with Kellogg's delicious Sugar Frosted Flakes,

'the sugar-toasted cereal for super energy,

'authentic models of the fastest cars in the world,

'including the new Proteus-engined Bluebird driven by Donald Campbell.'

We're hoping that Britain will be the first to carry

the world's land speed record to beyond 400 miles per hour.

It's probably one of the most unique places on the planet Earth,

the Bonneville Salt Flats.

The fellow that made it famous was Sir Malcolm Campbell.

He christened this area as the speed capital of the world, so to speak.

More than 20 years after his father had smashed the 300 mile barrier

at Bonneville,

Donald Campbell was going to test himself on the same track.

First time I became aware of Donald Campbell

was a friend of mine said, "Hey, have you seen the new car

"that the British are building for the land speed record?"

The car thing was of real interest to me

because it involved the entire British automotive industry

and aerospace industry,

and it was a huge undertaking, and so that really got my attention.

I was just amazed at the amount of effort

that was being put into this vehicle

to set a new world speed record for Great Britain.

On water, Donald Campbell was the undisputed champion of the world,

but this was his first attempt on land.

Four American teams were also at Bonneville,

each of them gunning for the world record too.

Campbell was desperate to beat them to it,

so on each of Bluebird's trial runs, he pushed the speed higher.

ENGINES WHINE AND ROAR

It was dawn and absolutely beautiful...

..sun just kind of peeping through.

That moment when the canopy is actually put down over him

and locked tight, he is then isolated in another world.

It needs a lot of guts, I think, to cocoon yourself away like that

and then press the pedal, open the throttle, release the brakes

and go forward into the unknown.

He eased the car forward and it really was just like a cartoon car,

an arrow going down the salt.

You're travelling faster than a 45 calibre bullet.

You can hear the tyres screaming against the salt.

There's the air that comes in the inlet ducts at hurricane force.

This is a really, really violent, serious piece of machinery

and, if you don't pay attention, if you don't do your homework,

it's going to end up biting you, and it'll bite you really hard.

He just disappears absolutely to the horizon.

And then suddenly this great cloud of salt came up and I thought,

"Christ, what the hell's happened?"

And then the car emerged out of the top of the salt cloud

and did one turnover and then disappeared into the salt again.

And then there was this noise, just like a tin trunk falling downstairs.

I ran, I ran, I ran and I just got there when the highway patrolman

was lifting him, like a dead body, out of the car.

And then the ambulance was there,

but he demanded that I shall sit in the front

and that Leo should sit with him, because, he told me afterwards,

he wasn't sure whether he was dying or not,

and he didn't want me to see that.

There's a little window from where he was to the driver,

and Leo opened it and he said,

"Skipper wants me to tell you that the family jewels are OK."

I suppose I have survived

the fastest crash that mankind has ever survived.

Well, she swerved, the offside wheels caught the soft salt

and the differential of adhesion caused the car to spin,

and spin terribly rapidly.

The car took off, flew for, I think, 400 yards, bounced four times

and tore itself apart.

Campbell's crash, at 300 miles an hour, was a very public calamity.

His reputation as the record breaker extraordinaire

lay shattered on the Bonneville salt.

In the eyes of the world, and probably from within his own eyes,

he had failed, and he had rather spectacularly smashed up

the most expensive car that had ever been built.

We met at the Dorchester in London.

Only time I've ever met him when he was visibly short on confidence.

He was just very uncertain as to what his future was

and, indeed, whether he had one.

He'd smashed his skull, had a very bad accident in the United States,

and this had obviously shaken him considerably.

But he had to do more record attempts

because he didn't have any money

and it was his only means of making money.

Donald Campbell blamed his crash on a poor quality track.

A search began, on the far side of the world,

for a better course for the next record attempt.

We actually spent about two months in Australia

just looking for somewhere

that it was going to be possible to do the record attempt.

So we're getting a bit desperate, to be honest.

And we saw this great expanse of dried-out salt lake, Lake Eyre.

The rebuilt Bluebird was shipped out to Lake Eyre.

Much of the old car had been salvaged

and a fin had been added to keep her stable at high speeds.

After his Bonneville crash, the pressure had redoubled.

What Campbell needed was a swift, successful run.

But in March 1963, in one of the driest places on Earth,

the unthinkable happened.

Hadn't experienced rain for years and, you know,

the British get there and it blooming rains.

They'd have trials, the salt would break because it had got wet,

the car would get stuck.

Fraught was the word.

The final storm that completely washed him out

was really cataclysmic.

It started with really tempestuous wind.

People scurrying everywhere, tying stuff down

and then suddenly the sky went black.

It was doom, it really was the end of the world.

After three frustrating months,

Campbell called off the record attempt.

Bluebird's backers still had nothing to show for their investment.

I think, back in the UK,

there was doubt as to whether Donald was going to do it.

There was certainly a feeling he was fated,

that he was just unlucky and it wasn't going to happen for him.

The press tore into Campbell.

They claimed he'd lost his nerve. Far more worrying

was the criticism from CN7's most important financial backer,

the industrialist Sir Alfred Owen.

Well, the sponsoring committee are being bitterly disappointed

at the slow rate of progress since the car was completed,

and I think are bound to question Donald Campbell very seriously

as to why this delay has taken place.

TV: 'Ladies and gentlemen, it's my pleasure now to introduce

'at the moment, this controversial figure, Mr Donald Campbell.'

With his reputation and his record attempt on the line,

Campbell was forced to confront his critics.

Well, it's so incomprehensible to us who are engaged on the operation,

it's easy to say when you judge something from 14,000 miles away,

sitting in the comfort of a plush office, time was wasted,

but those in the field know very differently.

Why do you think Sir Alfred has been attacking you in this manner?

Well, I don't know, David. Frankly it's incomprehensible to me,

and, obviously, a matter of deep regret.

Some of Campbell's financial backers pulled out.

His hopes of setting a land speed record were on a knife edge.

And then, from the Bonneville salt flats, came another hammer blow.

NEWSREEL: 'On the morning of August 5th 1963,

'Breedlove goes after the record.'

Craig Breedlove had built his jet car himself.

The American made record breaking look easy.

'Going into the mile, he's really moving.'

Spirit of America was not technically a car,

its jet engine did not drive the wheels.

407 miles an hour was an unofficial world record,

but what mattered was that Breedlove, not Campbell,

was now the most famous record breaker on Earth.

He had a reception for me, after I broke the 400 record,

at his home in Surrey.

The motoring press picked me up at my hotel in London

and drove me out there, and I know they were all anticipating,

you know, throwing the new record holder in front of Campbell

and seeing, you know,

him kind of upset because I had broken the record.

And, you know, he couldn't have been nicer.

I mean, it almost brings tears to my eyes to think about it.

He made me feel so comfortable, and so at home, and so welcome.

By now Campbell was seen as a liability.

More sponsors pulled out.

But enough money was scraped together

for one final attempt on the land speed record.

I was working on the Sunday Times as a young reporter,

but it was suggested to me that there might be a story

about the fact he was going out to get the world record.

I just thought he was a sort of playboy, to tell you the truth.

I thought he was a playboy cashing in on his father's reputation

to have a good time and make a lot of money.

And that was the image I think most people had of poor old Donald then.

I was very young then and I'm very old now.

Now that I have a chance to think about him,

I think everyone got him wrong, including me.

What he really was, behind all this, I think, was a genuine tragic figure.

What one was watching was a man who really was on trial for his life.

The rains had come time and again

and the salt, which should have been solid for his car to race on,

had turned to mush

and the salt crystals had become separated from the water,

so that any car which went across it at any speed

would have the tyres ripped off.

I mean, he really was scared stiff, to be quite honest about it.

But he could not go away from that place without the record.

NEWSREEL: 'All clear from Leo Villa

'and it's time for one more assault on that elusive record.

'A cough, a whine, an eerie scream shatters the tomblike stillness.'

-RADIO:

-'Bluebird to control. Check recorders running. Brakes at 8,000.

'Rolling up. Increasing 100 percent power.

'Compress up, 12,000, acceleration .65, speed 150.

'Three miles to go.'

To set a land speed record,

Campbell would need to drive the course twice.

Timers would take the average across both of the runs.

They did the first run which got him the record on that one journey.

I think they had something like 17 layers of paper thin rubber and nylon

on these whacking great tyres,

and I think they were down to the last five layers.

And if that layer had got punctured,

the whole thing would have blown up and he'd have been killed.

And that was the point at which he says he looked in the windscreen

and there was the image of his old father.

And he had a half smile on his face and he looked down...

..he said, "Don't worry, old boy, it'll be all right."

-ECHOING:

-"Don't worry old boy, it'll be all right."

"Don't worry, old boy, it'll be all right."

Donald turned the car around.

NEWSREEL: 'The necessary two runs have been made.

'The tyres are in ribbons.

'Now they must wait, for this is the end.

'The clock will give its answer.

'Success! A new world record!

'420.1 miles per hour, the fastest ever achieved on four wheels.'

After seven years of blood, sweat and tears,

Bluebird had finally broken the 400 mile barrier.

Campbell was officially the fastest man on Earth.

But for one of his closest associates,

the euphoria was short lived.

It turned a bit sour for me quite quickly

because Donald said that I'd made a fortune out of him,

which wasn't actually true,

and he refused to pay me the balance of the money.

So I said, "Well, in that case, you can do the water record on your own,

"and I'm going back to England and I'll put it in the hands of lawyers."

To Campbell's critics,

403 miles an hour was, to say the least, a qualified success.

It was slower than Breedlove's unofficial record

and way short of the 500 for which CN7 had been originally designed.

But Campbell had another ace to play.

That old stalwart, K7, had been shipped out to Australia.

No-one had ever broken land and water speed records

in the same year.

On the last day of 1964, he went for an historic double.

It was Campbell's greatest triumph.

Finally, he had proved himself the old man's equal

and written his name in the history books.

And then he got the water record.

And despite everything, I knew just what that meant to him.

That was the one thing his father had never done.

And although we'd had this fight over money, I was still very fond of him.

So I decided that I would send him a telegram of congratulations.

So I spent hours writing it overnight,

and was finally quite pleased with the result.

"Congratulations on getting the water record, Donald.

"You're now not only the biggest but the fastest bastard on Earth."

When we did parades through Adelaide or Sydney,

it was quite extraordinary the response to him.

In London, it really wasn't,

he really did seem a man more and more out of his time.

SCREAMING

You must remember this was the mid-'60s

and, by that time, the whole '60s social revolution was in full swing

and the one thing one really couldn't be in the '60s and be successful was to be square.

'We're all playing for a team, old boy,

'and we're all playing for the same team, as it so happens,

'and we're now at the moment when our national fortunes

'are at a fairly low ebb, but I believe deeply and profoundly

'that anything and whatever we're doing, we must redouble our efforts.'

As he said to me the first time,

"Well, old boy, I'm a king and country man." And I thought,

"God, king and country? What the hell are you on about?"

With the public appetite for record breaking on the wane,

many felt it was time for Campbell to retire.

But racing was the only life he had ever known.

You break your record and everyone just says, slap on the back,

well done, fantastic, here you are, you're a world record breaker.

The next day you wake up and think, "What am I going to do today?"

So you end up on this treadmill

of going from record to record, to record, to record.

At what point where, you know, there's a beginning...

..where is that end?

In November 1965,

Craig Breedlove raised the land speed record to 600 miles an hour.

What Campbell needed in his transatlantic duel

was a groundbreaking new vehicle,

a rocket car which would smash the sound barrier

and seize back the land speed record for the British.

Ken Norris had come up with this design.

The calculations that were done

showed that it would be capable of at least 850 miles an hour.

A mock-up was built for the press to see

but, no, there was really no interest from industry

and so Donald knew he'd got to do something more

to get some backing from somewhere.

I saw him back at his house in England.

He said, "I've still got the old boat. Thank God I've got it,

"I can have another go and keep the show on the road

"by going for the world water speed record."

And we went and saw the old boat,

and it didn't look particularly impressive I must say.

It was in the garage

and he was going to have to refurbish it and all the rest of it.

I said, "Well, what are you going to do?" He said,

"Well, I think it'll probably kill me, but I've got to do it."

Campbell's sponsors had deserted him, he was broke

but, if he could smash the 300 mile an hour barrier on water,

he might get the money he needed to build his rocket car.

'World speed record holder, Donald Campbell, has announced

'that he is to attempt raising his own record over 300 miles per hour.

'The attempt will be made at Coniston...'

When we came back, '67,

the operation was being done on a shoestring.

We all knew that money was tight,

but once you were committed to doing it, there was really no way out.

The first thing that sort of really went wrong

was that they were doing static tests,

which they always did with the engine.

And it sucked bits of plastic and rivets through the turbine,

which damaged a lot of the blades,

so that engine was actually wrecked.

'The heartbreak of this project was that you are not only

'fighting the unknown, with the technicalities involved,

'but you are being continually frustrated

'by this appalling weather.'

The weather was abysmal at times.

It would be days on end

when there was just white horses riding down the lake.

As weeks of delay turned into months,

the press rounded on Campbell.

He was out of touch,

no-one was interested in his record breaking any more.

This isn't done for public appeal, or as a public entertainment.

If I was putting on a theatrical play

and nobody wanted to run up and watch it, I should be very worried.

-This isn't put on as a public entertainment.

-Why is it put on?

It's put on to try and reach a certain goal which is to see

a British boat eventually first past the magic 300 mark.

And we don't intend to stop or spare any effort to get it.

What others like to think about it is their business.

TONIA: The last record attempt,

that was difficult because I was against it

and I had a premonition which I only knew...

And I told him so.

I said, "I know you want to do this and I'm dead against it.

"I don't feel right about it."

See, when he's actually doing the run, it's so exciting

that you forget all the danger.

But when he's not doing the run and you're sitting around,

the danger's all you think about.

Every one I was at, I wanted to be the last,

but I don't think it will be ever the last.

In January 1967, the weather finally cleared.

A record attempt was imminent.

PHONE RINGS

On the morning of the 3rd when he called me,

he actually told me he couldn't wait to get out of that dump.

And I told him then that he mustn't be impatient.

He always told me that impatience in a record attempt is poison.

And he said, "Oh, don't worry, I'm going to be careful for both of us."

But he was not in a good mood.

We always had this thing, "You hang up now."

"No, you hang up now." I said, "You hang up now, darling."

And he didn't answer, but he sort of said,

"Look after yourself, won't you?"

And I said, "Yeah."

And afterwards, I thought, "Why did he say that?"

That was the last time we spoke.

It was a lovely frosty morning and we were out on the lake quite early.

Donald came on the radio to Leo, and Leo said, "Yes, it's fine,"

you know, "The water's fine, you ready to go?"

And he cast off from the pier.

And you could see the boat coming out into the centre of the lake.

And as it actually went past us, you knew it was going very fast.

It was almost going like a camera, shot, shot, shot,

as you were trying to sort of catch up with it all the time.

And then the timekeepers came on with a sort of coded message,

which I think was plus 47,

which was 297 miles an hour, which was very close to 300.

So, no doubt, there was a temptation

to try and push it a little bit further on the way back.

And then he made his, you know, started his return run.

I never feared for my father's life, because he always came home.

You didn't talk about the risk. It was the reward,

it was the result that counted, not the risk.

ENGINE WHINES AND ROARS

Bluebird K7 was more than 12 years old.

She had been designed to break the 200 barrier.

But fitted with a far more powerful engine,

she was travelling at over 300 miles an hour.

Aerodynamically, Bluebird was venturing into the unknown.

RADIO: 'To base, to base, complete accident I'm afraid, over.'

It must have made an awful bang when it went back into the water,

but I actually have no recollection of any sound, even to this day,

but I was sort of stood there, quite honestly,

you know, mouth open, gaping at this thing.

And I remember Leo Villa giving me a crack on the shoulder and saying,

"Come on, Robbie, for God's sake, let's get going and get him out."

'Christ, that's his lifejacket.

'Have they got him?

'Have you got him, Leo?!'

And then we saw his Mae West and, of course,

we thought, initially, that that was him

because we thought, you know, that obviously he would be inside it.

And, as it turned out, he wasn't, you know, it had been ripped off.

So I stayed around here from, what,

half past eight when the accident happened until nearly midday...

..and it really was quite eerie.

I was working in a hotel in a ski resort, ironing away one morning,

and I was called by the reception to a telephone call.

As I'm walking up, I...

It's very odd. I knew something was certainly not normal.

I think my mind just closed down.

I just remember thinking nothing, you know, just total blank.

Extraordinary.

I do love the beauty of it in all its seasons,

but I did have problems coming here, of just feeling physically sick.

I wouldn't go on the water, be like walking over my father's grave.

But it's better now.

'97-'98, Bill Smith from Newcastle rang me out of the blue

and just said that he was an amateur diver

and he was coming to Coniston

and it was his desire and ambition to find my dad's boat.

It was two years, three years later,

he rang me again excitedly screaming down the phone that he'd found it,

he'd found it, he'd found it.

I said, "If you bring the boat up, which you're going to have to do,

"you'll have to find my dad and bring my dad up as well."

So Bill brought him up

and we were finally able to lay my father to rest in a proper grave.

Doesn't change the fact, but...

..he's there and go and see him, put some flowers on the grave,

say, "Hi, Dad, how's it going, Skipper?" You know.

Where there's life, there's death. Sad facts.

I'd never smoked a cigarette in my life,

not even when I was at school,

and when I was with Donald, after dinner, we'd have a few drinks

and it then became a thing with him, because he liked a cigar.

And he'd say, "David, you've got to have a cigar."

And in the end, after about four or five days,

it was certainly going to be easier to smoke a cigar

than go on fighting with him over it.

So I smoked a cigar and I didn't like it at all,

but by the time I'd smoked four,

I'd changed my mind and I've smoked cigars ever since.

Often when I light a cigar, I will think back to that time.

And the memories of him are very real and very precious.

His father had a much easier job,

driving his simpler cars at lower speeds

and becoming a great national hero and getting his knighthood.

Donald tried the same thing on much more difficult cars,

going at much faster speeds in a very different world,

but he wasn't taken seriously in the way his father was.

And I think, though,

that when you go beneath the surface of what was going on,

you realise that this really was a man

who was a much greater man than his father, a much more heroic man,

a much nicer man, and a genuine hero.

Probably, also, I haven't grown up and, if that's so,

well, I'm quite prepared to accept it and I'm in no hurry.

There's too much time to grow up and grow old.

I think Donald is the sort of hero we really need today,

someone who is not phoney but, on the other hand, is not a pompous git.

He wasn't a pompous git, he was a good guy,

and he was very honourable.

"And so, today, as we finally lay to rest the Skipper

"beside the lake and in the shadow of our mountains,

"I believe that he will have found that other bluebird,

"that bluebird of eternal happiness

"that inspired two generations of racing legends.

"No man deserves it more."

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd