0:00:38 > 0:00:40There's a ceaseless movement
0:00:40 > 0:00:44of people and goods at the heart of Dover.
0:00:46 > 0:00:5014 million people each year catch the ferry to France.
0:00:56 > 0:00:57As sea journeys go,
0:00:57 > 0:01:02the 20 miles or so to Calais is hardly an ocean cruise,
0:01:02 > 0:01:05more functional than fashionable,
0:01:05 > 0:01:10but Alice Roberts is finding out when a Channel crossing
0:01:10 > 0:01:12was THE glamour ticket.
0:01:13 > 0:01:18In 1974, local girl Angie Westacott applied for a new job.
0:01:18 > 0:01:23It was to be the start of a 20-year-long love affair
0:01:23 > 0:01:25with the hovercraft.
0:01:25 > 0:01:29I never ever got tired of seeing that, and to this day
0:01:29 > 0:01:32if it came up I'd still be looking at it and thinking,
0:01:32 > 0:01:35"Oh, wow, that's fantastic, absolutely amazing."
0:01:35 > 0:01:37- So you got the job? - Got the job, yes,
0:01:37 > 0:01:40and after a couple of days got used to the movement and the motion
0:01:40 > 0:01:43and absolutely loved it, and a lot of us did.
0:01:44 > 0:01:47It was the futuristic way to cross the Channel.
0:01:47 > 0:01:51This was the age of Concorde,
0:01:51 > 0:01:55the moon landings and giant passenger hovercraft.
0:01:55 > 0:02:00"With its payload of 90 tonnes, it can carry 416 passengers
0:02:00 > 0:02:04"and 60 vehicles in airline-style comfort,
0:02:04 > 0:02:06"at a cruising speed of 65 knots."
0:02:06 > 0:02:11They flew for 30 years before being wound up
0:02:11 > 0:02:14and the hover port at Dover abandoned.
0:02:14 > 0:02:17So what happened?
0:02:17 > 0:02:21Didn't the passenger experience live up to the glamorous image?
0:02:21 > 0:02:24There's only one way to find out for sure,
0:02:24 > 0:02:28and that's to cross the Channel in a hovercraft ourselves,
0:02:28 > 0:02:33with Angie and some of her former crew-mates as our guides.
0:02:33 > 0:02:37But in order to get to grips with the highs and lows
0:02:37 > 0:02:39of hovercraft history,
0:02:39 > 0:02:42I'm going to have to go right back to the beginning
0:02:42 > 0:02:43to where it all took off.
0:02:43 > 0:02:47The passenger hovercraft was British through and through,
0:02:47 > 0:02:51the brainchild of Christopher Cockerill, engineer and boat builder.
0:02:51 > 0:02:55He started experimenting in the early 1950s,
0:02:55 > 0:02:58and actually worked out the physics in his kitchen.
0:02:58 > 0:03:03Hovercraft historian Warwick Jacobs is going to show me how.
0:03:03 > 0:03:07Warwick, these are the things Cockerill was playing around with.
0:03:07 > 0:03:09Yes, just household objects,
0:03:09 > 0:03:13pair of kitchen scales, coffee tins and an ordinary air blower.
0:03:13 > 0:03:14A hairdryer in fact.
0:03:14 > 0:03:19Let's see what that can lift with just a jet of air onto the scales.
0:03:19 > 0:03:22- OK.- Try it with one ounce first. - So on this flat side.
0:03:22 > 0:03:25Yep, try it on the flat side, cos less air is going to escape.
0:03:27 > 0:03:29And that will easily lift one ounce.
0:03:29 > 0:03:32- No problem.- Let's see if it will lift the two.
0:03:32 > 0:03:37No, so what we're going to do now is to create, as Cockerill did,
0:03:37 > 0:03:41what we've got here is two tins, one tin inside the other tin,
0:03:41 > 0:03:44and the jet of air comes down between the two tins
0:03:44 > 0:03:49forming a curtain or jet of air, which stops this inner air escaping.
0:03:49 > 0:03:52That's much more effective than just having a single jet of air
0:03:52 > 0:03:55- turning it into a ring.- Exactly, the same amount of air
0:03:55 > 0:03:57doing twice as much work. Go back to one,
0:03:57 > 0:03:59and we'll see it should do that easily.
0:03:59 > 0:04:01No problem at all.
0:04:01 > 0:04:04Try it with the two.
0:04:04 > 0:04:07- Easy.- Yeah. - Let's see if it'll do the three.
0:04:08 > 0:04:12Yes, and I'm still not touching the plate, moving around on it.
0:04:12 > 0:04:14Will it do the four?
0:04:14 > 0:04:16And if lifts four ounces.
0:04:16 > 0:04:17If you scale that up,
0:04:17 > 0:04:20the bigger it gets, the more efficient, and it works better.
0:04:20 > 0:04:25So it's a curtain of compressed air pushing down
0:04:25 > 0:04:27that gives the hovercraft its lift.
0:04:29 > 0:04:34The first successful cross-channel flight was in 1959,
0:04:34 > 0:04:37Christopher Cockerill hanging on for dear life on
0:04:37 > 0:04:40the front of his prototype to keep it weighed down.
0:04:40 > 0:04:44So how do you control what is effectively
0:04:44 > 0:04:46a big floating hairdryer?
0:04:49 > 0:04:51Time for a flying lesson.
0:04:58 > 0:05:00Whay!
0:05:01 > 0:05:03Wow, I'm just...
0:05:05 > 0:05:09I'm travelling on a frictionless cushion of air,
0:05:09 > 0:05:12but my instructor Russ tells me I'm not properly hovering yet.
0:05:12 > 0:05:15What you're doing is just blowing a big hole in the water
0:05:15 > 0:05:18and because you keep losing confidence, slowing down
0:05:18 > 0:05:21and turning too tight, you're falling into that hole in the water.
0:05:21 > 0:05:24- Right, OK. - You've got to keep moving,
0:05:24 > 0:05:27you've got to keep your turns gentle and keep your speed up.
0:05:27 > 0:05:30Wow, there's some quite big waves out here.
0:05:32 > 0:05:34I'm hanging on for dear life here.
0:05:34 > 0:05:38Those early pilots learning to drive these things
0:05:38 > 0:05:41really had their job cut out for them.
0:05:44 > 0:05:48- Can I have another go, Russ? - I don't see why not.
0:05:52 > 0:05:56Once mastered, I can see it was a lot of fun for the early pilots,
0:05:56 > 0:05:59and when the commercial service started in 1968,
0:05:59 > 0:06:01the public loved it too.
0:06:02 > 0:06:06What went wrong then? Was there something about the ride
0:06:06 > 0:06:09that made the thrill fade?
0:06:11 > 0:06:16To find out, we need some passengers. I've brought Warwick and my dad.
0:06:16 > 0:06:21He's an engineer, and he also rode on the hover service in the '70s.
0:06:21 > 0:06:26We're going to fly the old route to Calais in this 12-seater hovercraft,
0:06:26 > 0:06:29with former crew members Angie, Vanessa and Brian.
0:06:36 > 0:06:39Really strange, I've never been in a hovercraft before.
0:06:39 > 0:06:42It's really quite bizarre. It is like flying.
0:06:42 > 0:06:46What was the quickest you did a crossing to Calais in, Brian?
0:06:46 > 0:06:4825 minutes.
0:06:48 > 0:06:53- Angie, you were handling drinks out to people.- We were, yes,
0:06:53 > 0:06:57and in fact it was so quick that we didn't have time
0:06:57 > 0:06:58to serve all the passengers,
0:06:58 > 0:07:03so we'd phone the flight-deck and say, "Can you slow down?"
0:07:03 > 0:07:08- Dad, I thought I'd find you up here with the pilot.- Yes, of course.
0:07:08 > 0:07:13From what I can see you're skidding all the time, isn't that right, Rob?
0:07:13 > 0:07:17Like on ice, we're chasing a bar of soap around the bathtub,
0:07:17 > 0:07:19a bit like that, trying to grab this bar of soap
0:07:19 > 0:07:21and you can't quite grab hold of it.
0:07:22 > 0:07:28In its heyday, no other crossing could match the hovercraft for speed.
0:07:29 > 0:07:32The big craft could take on three-metre high waves,
0:07:32 > 0:07:36but it wasn't always a comfortable ride.
0:07:36 > 0:07:41Stylish maybe, smooth, that was another matter.
0:07:45 > 0:07:4730 bone-rattling minutes in,
0:07:47 > 0:07:53we're experiencing the ups and downs first-hand.
0:07:53 > 0:07:57Our pilot Rob has just decided to turn around and go back to Dover.
0:07:57 > 0:08:01We made it halfway across the Channel, but the swell got too big,
0:08:01 > 0:08:05just over a metre, so we're now heading back.
0:08:05 > 0:08:08White cliffs of Dover.
0:08:08 > 0:08:11But it wasn't the occasional rocky ride that brought about
0:08:11 > 0:08:15the end of the Dover service. Even when the Channel Tunnel opened,
0:08:15 > 0:08:19passengers were still queuing to catch the hovercraft.
0:08:19 > 0:08:22Warwick, it seems like such a fantastic form of transport,
0:08:22 > 0:08:25so why on earth did it wind down?
0:08:25 > 0:08:28It was the ending of duty-free which finished the hovercraft.
0:08:28 > 0:08:31They could beat the tunnel, no problem, they were still faster
0:08:31 > 0:08:36right to the very end, but duty-free supplemented the hovercraft service.
0:08:36 > 0:08:40In fact, duty-free sales didn't just supplement the service,
0:08:40 > 0:08:42they became its main source of income.
0:08:44 > 0:08:47With spiralling fuel costs and no chance
0:08:47 > 0:08:52of replacing the ageing hovercraft, they were grounded in October 2000.
0:08:54 > 0:08:57After all those years of working on the hovercraft,
0:08:57 > 0:09:01- it must have been sad to see them finally stop.- It was.- End of an era.
0:09:01 > 0:09:04It's still sad, actually. Coming on this today is just fantastic
0:09:04 > 0:09:07because it just brings it back even more.
0:09:08 > 0:09:12The hovercraft's inventor, Christopher Cockerill, predicted that
0:09:12 > 0:09:17we would travel across the Atlantic in huge nuclear-powered hovercraft.
0:09:17 > 0:09:22In the end, it was a dream that stalled in the Channel.
0:09:30 > 0:09:33Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd