The Irish Sea Coast

The Isle of Man isn't part of the United Kingdom,

but it's got a special place in its heart, looking out to all our shores.

Like the hub of a wheel, it's almost equidistant from Northern Ireland,

Scotland, England and Wales.

For a small island, it can boast some big ideas.

How about the Laxey Wheel?

Now that's what you call a water feature.

And I've turned up in time to turn it on.

Keeper of the wheel Roger Clare is showing me how it's done.

Now all you need to do is turn the wheel clockwise.

-Does it start first time?

-We'll see.

MECHANISM CREAKS

That's a good noise.

Opening this valve releases a flow of water which is forced

up the tower to cascade on the wheel, setting it in motion.

There it goes.

Oh, that's great.

You might get wet now.

Oh, yeah!

When it started to whirl in 1854, it wowed the locals

and its sheer scale is still staggering.

So why is the world's largest working waterwheel here,

spinning around at the centre of the Irish Sea?

There are clues to its construction nearby,

the abandoned lead mines and the port at the bottom of the valley.

It might be hard to believe today, but 120 years ago this place hummed with activity

as countless tonnes of zinc and lead ore were shipped out of the harbour here.

Sea trade kept business buoyant at Laxey, but underground, water was threatening to sink it.

Mine expert Pete Geddis is going to show me the damp, dingy hell-hole below.

OK, Neil, well, this is the sea entrance, access tunnel to the well shaft.

-This little door?

-This little door.

Oh, yes, I hate it already.

It probably would have been wetter than this in the mining days

because the discharged water would have run along here.

Teams of miners toiled around the clock, chasing richer seams of ore.

As they dug deeper, the water problem got worse.

-The miner's nightmare was the water ingressing into the shaft and then getting into the levels below.

-Yeah.

Where is the water coming from, if that's not a stupid question?

This is just ground drainage water, it's running off the land, it's running down the bedrock,

and then it finds its way onto the edge of the shaft, so it's a perpetual sea of rain down here.

All mines flood.

Often water was pumped out with steam engines,

but with no coal on the Isle of Man, steam wasn't an option.

So what about putting the water to work?

That's what the Laxey Wheel does, Victorian style.

Streams piped down the valley drove the wheel.

Its rotation-powered machine is capable of pumping out 250 gallons of water per minute.

Baling out the mine shafts wasn't the wheel's only job.

They could have boxed the machinery in, hidden it away.

Instead it's deliberately sited at the head of the valley,

and emblazoned with the Three Legs of Man.

A wheel of fortune inviting investors to buy shares in the mine.

The mountain railway started its slow, steady climb in 1895.

It takes about half an hour to haul its way up to the top of Snaefell,

the snow mountain, at over 2,000 feet, the highest peak on the Isle of Man.

This is all very well, but when's the buffet coming round? That's what I want to know.

The big attraction is sightseeing, nice enough on the way up,

but I'm told on top there's a unique view of the British Isles.

Now, I know the summit's dead ahead, can't see a thing.

OK, then, here we are on the summit,

but I can see nothing, and I might as well be in a car park in Croydon.

When the mist does lift, the view is spectacular.

This is the only summit from which you can see every kingdom of the British Isles.

30 miles north, Scotland's southern shore is on the horizon.

Spin around and England is out to the east,

but my coastal companions continue their wheel around the edge of the Irish Sea out to the west.

Across the water, Dick Strawbridge is picking up the journey in Ireland.

Dublin, a great trading city on the sea.

Two mighty walls protect Dublin's port from silting up.

But shifting sands also produce beautiful beaches along Ireland's eastern shore.

This is a green coast, the lush landscape put to good use by the farmers.

Further north, fields give way to peaks.

The mountains of Mourne welcome us to Northern Ireland.

I'm here to celebrate a local hero whose fame first took off at Newcastle.

As an Ulsterman, I'm passionate about Northern Ireland's engineering excellence.

Look at this! An original 1948 tractor, conceived and designed in Northern Ireland,

the little grey Fergie's a brainchild of local man

Harry Ferguson, but Ferguson's idea was more than just a tractor.

Born in County Down in 1884, farmer's son Harry Ferguson grew into a great engineer.

In the 1920s, he was the first to combine a tractor and a plough together into a single unit.

Ferguson's new mechanism of links and springs

meant the driver could raise and lower the plough on his own.

It revolutionised agriculture worldwide.

But before breaking new ground with his tractors, the young Harry Ferguson's eyes were on the skies.

In 1910, only seven years after the Wright brothers had mastered powered flight on the sand dunes

of America's east coast, a dashing 26-year-old Harry Ferguson planned to put Ireland on the aviation map.

He came here to Newcastle, County Down.

The town had offered a £100 prize to the first person to fly three miles across the bay.

Aviation enthusiast Ernie Cromie has a 3rd scale model of Harry's flying machine.

So where did he come to the design, how did he come up with this?

Basically by looking at other aircraft which some of the early pioneers had made,

people like Bleriot and so on, at air shows in Rheims and Blackpool,

and then deciding, right, that looks reasonably good, and I'll have a little bit of that.

The controls were pretty basic, really, a throttle lever, mechanism to control the elevators

at the rear of the aircraft, and also a rudder,

and then to turn the aircraft in the air, it was basically by a system of wing warping,

to alter the degree of lift on either wing.

-Wing warping, bending the wings.

-Exactly.

We're talking about wood and... what was the material he used?

Well, it would have been Irish linen, what else?

-He left the ground in something made out of wood and linen.

-That's right.

On the 8th August 1910, Harry's Ferguson's ambition reached for the skies.

For three long miles, he battled against winds whipping across the Irish Sea.

Harry held his nerve. The first person to see this stretch

of Ireland's coast from the air. He pocketed the £100 prize.

But a much bigger prize was at stake for Irish aviation 30 years later in 1940.

During the Second World War, a battle was being fought

off Ireland's west coast for the control of the Atlantic.

The convoys supplying Britain were at the mercy of the U-boats.

The Allies fought back from sea and air.

The depth charges of the Sunderland flying boats sank many a Nazi sub.

English plane makers Shorts collaborated with Belfast shipbuilders Harland and Wolff

to build the Sunderland flying boats.

Ted Jones is in his 80s now, but as a young pilot,

he learnt to handle sky-going ships at Pensacola on the Florida coast.

Obviously, it was tough in the RAF, Pensacola Beach, you getting a suntan, is that what it was then?

-Of course, well we had to relax, of course.

-And that's where you learnt to fly flying boats.

-So how successful was the Sunderland as a weapons system?

-Very good. It was a colossal air...

It weighed about 25 tonne when it was fully loaded.

It was built like a tank, it kind of wrapped itself around you and...

I felt at home. When I got in and sat on my seat, I was at home, you know.

But to fly, they were beautiful to fly.

No matter how bad the weather may be, they're always on the job,

bringing in the convoys, looking out for U-boats and enemy raiders.

-The operational flights were very long, weren't they?

-About 12, 13 hours.

What about eating and sort of surviving?

Oh, well, we cooked onboard. The Sunderland has two decks, so you had

the bottom deck with the kitchen, the flush toilet and the wardrobe.

And then you went back to the bomb room.

There's a submarine, let's descend and have a closer look.

It seems British but we'd better make sure.

It was really important to have the whole of the north Atlantic open, it kept Britain alive.

-Oh, it did, yes, of course it did.

-We don't see flying boats, why don't we have them any more?

Well, they're difficult to handle on the water, you see. You can't just say,

"The wind's blowing that way but you want to park it here," you can't do that.

They don't build flying boats in Belfast any more, but they are still in the aircraft business,

a tradition of aviation excellence that goes back 100 years to Harry Ferguson,

and his most excellent adventure here over the sands of County Down.

We continue our wheel around the Irish Sea, in England with Alice.

The Solway Firth separates the Scots from the English.

England begins in the mud with the promise of mountains to come.

These beautiful beaches don't attract the crowds

like Blackpool further south, but you can still get a cornet.

You won't sell many ice creams at that speed!

Only a short drive away, the peaks of the Lake District are tantalisingly close.

Wastwater is the deepest lake in England,

and just behind is Scafell Pike, the highest mountain in England,

but the big story of this shore is sand.

Morecambe Bay, the largest expanse of inter-tidal mudflats in Britain,

fun for some,

an obstacle to others.

Morecambe Bay covers 120 square miles.

A long detour unless you brave the perilous path over the sand.

Before the railway arrived, horse-drawn carriages sometimes

got stuck, with tragic results, as they tried to race across the mud.

These sandbanks feel so solid, I can see why people might think about

taking a short cut across them, but they're also incredibly treacherous.

SIREN WAILS The siren warns the unwary that the tide's turning.

It rushes in at about nine miles an hour, twice the speed

of a brisk walk, flooding the bay in up to 30 foot of water.

And a hidden danger lurks to hold you fast as the sea surges in -

quicksand.

What turns soft sand, so nice between the toes, into a sticky sludge

that can cement you to the spot, unable to escape its grip?

Shortly, I'll shun the safety of the path and get stuck in the mud myself.

To see exactly what I'll be getting myself into, we're making some DIY quicksand.

Sedimentologist Jeff Peakall and his team from Leeds University are building up layers of sand

which can be saturated with water, flowing in from underneath.

Now you've got a tube of experimental quicksand here, but what is it when it occurs naturally?

Quicksand is really where you change from a solid state

into a liquid state, really rapidly, almost instantaneously.

And can it be any type of sand with water flowing through it?

No, it needs one with lots of holes in so it needs to be nice

round grains, ideally all grains of the same size.

What we're going to do here is run a quick experiment

and I'm going to put a model digger truck in here.

So the sand seems to be supporting the weight of that very well at the moment.

We're going to add a little bit of water, from underneath.

We've got some water flowing in through here, but it remains solid

for a period of time, and then suddenly it turns into a liquid, and our digger

is disappearing into the sand, just as the sand has gone from a solid into a liquid.

Yes, it's not just going underwater, it's actually sinking into the sand.

If you, as you walk on it, you just add that extra shaking

vibration, that's just enough to break the grains apart.

So one of the factors producing the sinking effect in quicksand is actually the movement of the person.

Yes, and then if you begin to sink in and you start to wriggle,

then you increase the effect and you'll actually sink further.

One of the difficult things for the person falling into quicksand is to try and remain relatively still.

This will be me in a minute, sinking in.

The secret for survival is to spread your weight over the surface, so instead of tyres,

the truck that's taking me out is on tracks.

It's one of the few vehicles you could actually take out onto the sands with confidence and knowing

that you would get back safely, and that's all because of its huge wide tracks underneath.

We've actually gone out of this vehicle before and

stepped onto the sand and sunk and the vehicle's been sat on the top.

Volunteer Garry Parsons set up Bay Search & Rescue

after witnessing the galloping tide almost kill a man stuck in the mud.

The sand was so hard you couldn't drive your fingers into it down by the side of his legs.

We thought we were going to watch this guy drown right in front of us.

Now these versatile vehicles provide rapid response,

taking the most direct route to strugglers on the sand.

Down we go.

That is incredibly steep.

Bay Search & Rescue and the on-site coastguard are preparing

for a spot of quicksand training, and I'm going to be the guinea pig.

Starting to have second thoughts about this.

Lovely bit of quicksand we stumbled across this morning for you.

-Right.

-Off you go, jump in.

OK.

If I'm going to get myself in here, you better get me out before the tide comes in.

No worries.

That feels quite firm... at the moment.

I'm just moving my ankles, I reckon, and there's some water there.

The mud is just there, can I get my foot out?

What's really horrible and produces this rising sense of panic,

you're trying to move and you're trying to work yourself free, and every time you're moving your foot

and agitating the silt around you, you can just feel yourself sinking in further.

It really is solid, I reckon I can lean right back

and just stay in the silt.

It's got me good and proper, that really is quite scary.

It's very scary,

you can just imagine being here and the tide coming in,

nobody around for miles, I just can't move.

'The sand roots you to the spot, and then the sea rises over your head.

'That's why these guys race against the tide.'

OK, Alice, we'll soon have you out.

The only way to release me is to liquefy the sand.

First they loosen it up and then turn it into a liquid by adding more water.

I'm a bit worried about sinking further in.

You won't go any further.

Is that coming out? It's coming.

That's one.

-OK?

-Yeah.

-Thank you very much.

-You're welcome.

It's great to be free.

Despite the dangers, if you stick within safe limits,

this is a paradise for playing around.

We love the seaside so much, we'll pay for its pleasures.

Sand and scares can be a winning combination.

Further south at Sefton Sands, they have their own thrill rides.

Then big, long beaches give way to a big, bold city...

Liverpool.

The Mersey might be muddy, but where there's muck, there's brass, or maybe iron.

An iron ship, as Mark's about to find out.

In 1888, the world's largest ship was making her way up the Mersey,

the SS Great Eastern.

It was the final engineering triumph of Isambard Kingdom Brunel.

But this wasn't her maiden voyage, it was her last.

The Great Eastern had been launched 30 years earlier in 1858.

Built for non-stop travel to Australia,

she was nearly twice the length of any other ship,

the largest moveable thing men had ever made.

And Brunel was the man that designed her.

This is the most famous of all the images of Brunel.

Look, he has his stovepipe hat, his cigar, behind him the drag chains of the Great Eastern.

But he's actually a real engineer, because, look, he's got mud on his trousers.

His plan for the Great Eastern specified a revolutionary double skin iron hull,

but her massive size also made her massively over-budget.

Building his masterpiece took a terrible toll on Brunel.

A week after the Great Eastern's trial voyage, he died, following a stroke.

His great liner fared little better.

Smaller, faster ships captured the passenger trade she was built for.

Her last journey was down the Mersey

to become a floating billboard advertising a local department store.

If Brunel had seen it thus, he would have cried.

Finally, the ship that had broken Brunel's heart

was herself to be broken up for scrap.

Too big for the breaker's yard, she was beached on the banks of the Mersey.

Marine archaeologist Mike Stammers is showing me her last resting place.

So this is a contemporary photograph?

Yes, of the Great Eastern on New Ferry Beach.

She's looking at an angle, isn't she?

-Yes, and we're standing right near the bow.

-What, just there?

Yeah, two tiny little people looking up at this towering bow.

-It would have been right up there.

-Yeah, right up into the sky blocking out the skyline behind.

This mountain of wrought iron was a valuable prize for the scrap metal men,

but the old girl wasn't going to go down without a struggle.

What they hadn't bargained for was the workmanship of Brunel.

She was so well built it took them nearly two years to break it up.

So rather than making a big profit they made a loss.

They made a thumping great loss.

And, of course, the actual process of breaking her up must have been terribly hard work.

Oh, yes, because they had no oxyacetylene in those days,

it was a case of sledgehammers and coal chisels,

and a great big iron wrecking ball that they dropped onto the plates, and hoped to smash them apart.

200 men, sometimes working day and night,

needed two years to smash the ship to bits.

Surely some scrap must have sunk down into the silt.

Mike is off to try and find pieces of Brunel's liner buried in the mud,

but I'm going down river

to where they're still breaking up ships.

I want to see how things have moved on in the 120 years

since the Great Eastern was battered to death near here.

Former Falklands warship HMS Intrepid arrived six months ago to be broken up.

-Where's the ship?

-Well, HMS Intrepid came in here in January, and this is all you've got left.

It looks like chaos, but presumably it's all terribly organised.

Everybody knows what they're doing, we've most probably got about 12 guys down here.

We've got six machines working, we're processing copper, brass, cable, aluminium.

Another eight weeks, this will be completely cleared,

the lock gates will be opened, water will come in here, and hopefully two more vessels.

Just like for the Victorian ship breakers, time is still money,

speed is the difference between profit and loss.

But Brunel couldn't have imagined how his machine age would evolve to eat itself.

You can't crack up a ship without leaving some traces behind.

Back out in the mud, Mike thinks he's found a bit of Brunel's Great Eastern.

This is what I spotted before, I think you'll be rather impressed

-with this.

-Isn't that extraordinary?

-It's a great big chunk of iron plate.

-Hang on, there's a trowel for you.

-Thank you.

-There, look, look.

-Solid as anything.

How do you actually know this is the Great Eastern?

Well, the Great Eastern was built of very thick plate, either

three quarters of an inch or an inch thick, so if we get the callipers...

That looks pretty good.

-Look at that.

-That's nearly an inch.

-Nearly an inch.

-15/16.

-So that's a good indicator.

It looks like it's running through to there, so if I try the other end,

looks like bits of rivet here as well. Look at those.

Look, I can just lift it out.

I've got my own row of rivets here as well.

Yeah, Great Eastern revealed.

There we are. Good Lord, bright metal.

Isn't that wonderful?! There it is, as fresh as it comes.

Some three million rivets held the Great Eastern together.

It seems a precious few are still holding fast 150 years later.

The struggle of building this iron leviathan broke Brunel,

but she's left him a fitting memorial,

ironwork of his masterpiece scattered in the mud of the Mersey.

In 1850, the metal merchants of the Mersey cast iron parts for a mighty machine.

And at the centre of the Irish Sea, out on the Isle of Man, it's still spinning.

We've come full circle, back to the Laxey Wheel.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

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