New attempt to get Bluebird lottery funding

10:23am Friday 12th August 2005

Donald Campbell's Bluebird may yet be restored to the shape of her hey-day if a dedicated team of supporters has its way.

It has been announced that a second bid for lottery cash is to be made to display the boat at Coniston's Ruskin Museum.

Following a meeting with Heritage Lottery Fund representatives in Manchester, experts at the museum said they would start work on another application, after their first plea for lottery money was knocked back earlier this year.

The speed ace's daughter, Gina Campbell, whose family trust owns the boat, this week said she would support the museum team's bid. However, she said that she was so exasperated with the Heritage Lottery Fund that, at times, she felt tempted to have the boat thrown back into Coniston Water, from where she was recovered in 2001.

Ruskin Museum curator Vicky Slowe, who attended the meeting with the HLF, along with Campbell family members, said a new bid would be put in by the end of the year, with a decision expected next June.

Miss Slowe said that the HLF was keen to see the boat conserved and displayed in Coniston, but one of the sticking points was over whether she would be brought back to running order.

"We are talking about a full conservation of all we have got, and some form of construction, but not to operational order," she said.

Campbell lost his life in the boat on Coniston in January 1967, attempting to break his own world water speed record. Although diver Bill Smith recovered a large section of Bluebird, along with many smaller parts, his daughter, Gina Campbell, has always been adamant that she should not be displayed in her wrecked form.

Ms Campbell said that the HLF had worked with them on the original bid, only to turn them down at the last minute.

"Personally, I'm nearly to the point of saying to Bill (Smith), put it in some concrete and put it back in the lake where it belongs."

However, she believed that Vicky Slowe and the team had worked so hard, that they should try again.

"If I did not feel honour bound to her and the people of Coniston then I would have a whole different attitude."

She said although she had accepted that the boat would not run again, she still wanted it to have its engine and to look as if it could, and did, run.

Miss Campbell said that conserving the boat simply as she was would be tantamount to putting on display the Mercedes-Benz in which Diana, Princess of Wales, died.

In a statement, the HLF said it had been unable to fund a project which would have restored Bluebird to full working order as it would, "in part destroy its historical remains".

At the meeting with the Bluebird team, the HLF indicated it could consider funding, "a more conservation-led approach" towards the boat, which would place her on static display at the museum.

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