Marlin275
12-02-2005, 09:35 PM
Achievement or Disaster: Which Is Remembered Best?
By ALAN COWELL
Published: December 2, 2005
CONISTON, England - It was Jan. 4, 1967, and the fastest speedboat in the world, the jet-powered Bluebird K7, seemed poised once again to break the water-speed record. Then, at over 300 miles per hour, catastrophe struck. Donald Campbell died as his speedboat crashed and sank into Coniston Water in 1967 as he was traveling over 300 m.p.h. to break his own record. The recovery of the wreckage has set off a debate about how his quest for speed should be commemorated.
"I can't see anything - I'm having to draw back," the pilot, Donald Campbell, radioed as the Bluebird reared up and somersaulted in a curtain of spray that cloaked the final moments of its and his demise. "I've got the bows up. I'm gone."
With those words, a dynastic questing for speed that had begun with Mr. Campbell's father came to an abrupt end, and for 34 years the remains of the jet-powered Bluebird - and of Mr. Campbell - lay in the chill, dark depths, 150 feet below the surface of Coniston Water in the English Lake District.
But when the wreckage was finally recovered in 2001, a new struggle erupted around a vessel that came to symbolize British design, ingenuity and grit: Should it stand as an emblem of Mr. Campbell's successes before the crash or of his final disaster? And another question seemed to beg an answer: Do the British feel more comfortable with their successes or with their failures?
"You could argue that Scott of the Antarctic is more remembered than people who survived after reaching the South Pole, and a lot of people round here remember Mallory and Irving, whether they reached the summit of Everest or not," said Vicky Slowe, the curator of the Ruskin Museum here. "The feeling here is that we should be celebrating the achievements, which are considerable, not the ending," she said of Mr. Campbell, in an interview at the museum where she hopes to display a restored Bluebird.
The debate about Mr. Campbell's legacy reached a climax recently when the charitable arm of Britain's National Lottery turned down a request for a $1.75 million grant to restore the Bluebird as a precise, functioning replica of the boat. Instead, the Heritage Lottery Fund said, the refashioning should be based on the Bluebird as it emerged from Coniston Water in 2001.
"What we are trying to do is preserve the whole Campbell story," said Nicky Price, a spokeswoman for the Heritage Lottery Fund, which spends $500 million a year on historical and other conservation projects. "Everyone totally agreed that the crash is part of the whole story."
Indeed, said Tony Jones, another official of the Heritage Fund: "We don't think people want to see a replicalike Bluebird. They want to see the original that Donald Campbell had his triumphs and tragedy in."
But that decision drew further criticism. Writing in The Guardian, the columnist Simon Jenkins said displaying the wreckage "would be like commemorating Princess Diana with a statue of her crashed Mercedes."
"If heritage is about narrative," he continued, "surely Bluebird's is one of guts applied to engineering. It is about speed and design, not about crashes."
The Campbell story dates to the days before World War II when Sir Malcolm Campbell, Donald Campbell's father, achieved great fame by setting land and water speed records in Britain and America. He took the name Bluebird for his cars and boats from the play of the same name by Maurice Maeterlinck, a Belgian Nobel laureate.
The play, first produced in 1909, tells a story of two children seeking a mystical Blue Bird of happiness. Like the quest for speed, said Ms. Slowe at the museum here, Bluebird represents "the pursuit of the unattainable."
In his lifetime, Donald Campbell set seven world speed records and in January 1967 was trying to beat his own record on water of 276.33 m.p.h. - established in Bluebird K7 three years earlier in Australia. On Jan. 4, he completed a first run, reaching speeds of just under 300 m.p.h. He turned without refueling and was thought to have exceeded 320 m.p.h. on the return leg when, many people believe, the Bluebird K7 hit the ripples rebounding from his wake on the first run and reared out of control. Mr. Campbell was 45 when he died.
In 2001, a diving team led by Bill Smith, an engineer, located the wreckage and the remains of Mr. Campbell. The vessel seemed relatively well preserved. The paintwork of its aluminum body was still blue, though blemished. The tail fin with its British flag was largely intact. Most of the rear of the boat around its jet engine survived the crash, but the cockpit and the stabilizing sponsons in the bow had broken up.
From the beginning, Mr. Smith said: "It would never go on display the way it came out of the water, with a wrecked front end. The family would not allow it. The intention was always to put it back as near as possible to the original, without losing any of the original material."
Indeed, said Gina Campbell, 55, Mr. Campbell's daughter, "she will not go on public display in the condition she is in," adding: "It's too gruesome. It's not for people to peer at where my father lost his life."
"If it's not a fitting memorial to my dad and his achievements, we'll put it back into Coniston," she said, meaning that she would have the vessel lowered back into the lake.
An idea to resolve the debate is to use a paint that becomes fluorescent in ultraviolet light to highlight where restoration of the wreckage has taken place. The Heritage Lottery Fund has agreed to consider a new proposal from Ms. Campbell's supporters in early December.
If the plan succeeds, a version of the original Bluebird could well return to Coniston, not to seek to break speed limits but to inspire something of the awe that drew spectators to watch Mr. Campbell's record-breaking attempts. "I want kids to come along to the Bluebird and say, 'Wow!' " Ms. Campbell said.
And for their parents? "It's the heroic myth," Ms. Slowe said. "As in the Arthurian knights in pursuit of the Holy Grail, Donald Campbell was always proving himself."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/02/international/europe/02bluebird.html
By ALAN COWELL
Published: December 2, 2005
CONISTON, England - It was Jan. 4, 1967, and the fastest speedboat in the world, the jet-powered Bluebird K7, seemed poised once again to break the water-speed record. Then, at over 300 miles per hour, catastrophe struck. Donald Campbell died as his speedboat crashed and sank into Coniston Water in 1967 as he was traveling over 300 m.p.h. to break his own record. The recovery of the wreckage has set off a debate about how his quest for speed should be commemorated.
"I can't see anything - I'm having to draw back," the pilot, Donald Campbell, radioed as the Bluebird reared up and somersaulted in a curtain of spray that cloaked the final moments of its and his demise. "I've got the bows up. I'm gone."
With those words, a dynastic questing for speed that had begun with Mr. Campbell's father came to an abrupt end, and for 34 years the remains of the jet-powered Bluebird - and of Mr. Campbell - lay in the chill, dark depths, 150 feet below the surface of Coniston Water in the English Lake District.
But when the wreckage was finally recovered in 2001, a new struggle erupted around a vessel that came to symbolize British design, ingenuity and grit: Should it stand as an emblem of Mr. Campbell's successes before the crash or of his final disaster? And another question seemed to beg an answer: Do the British feel more comfortable with their successes or with their failures?
"You could argue that Scott of the Antarctic is more remembered than people who survived after reaching the South Pole, and a lot of people round here remember Mallory and Irving, whether they reached the summit of Everest or not," said Vicky Slowe, the curator of the Ruskin Museum here. "The feeling here is that we should be celebrating the achievements, which are considerable, not the ending," she said of Mr. Campbell, in an interview at the museum where she hopes to display a restored Bluebird.
The debate about Mr. Campbell's legacy reached a climax recently when the charitable arm of Britain's National Lottery turned down a request for a $1.75 million grant to restore the Bluebird as a precise, functioning replica of the boat. Instead, the Heritage Lottery Fund said, the refashioning should be based on the Bluebird as it emerged from Coniston Water in 2001.
"What we are trying to do is preserve the whole Campbell story," said Nicky Price, a spokeswoman for the Heritage Lottery Fund, which spends $500 million a year on historical and other conservation projects. "Everyone totally agreed that the crash is part of the whole story."
Indeed, said Tony Jones, another official of the Heritage Fund: "We don't think people want to see a replicalike Bluebird. They want to see the original that Donald Campbell had his triumphs and tragedy in."
But that decision drew further criticism. Writing in The Guardian, the columnist Simon Jenkins said displaying the wreckage "would be like commemorating Princess Diana with a statue of her crashed Mercedes."
"If heritage is about narrative," he continued, "surely Bluebird's is one of guts applied to engineering. It is about speed and design, not about crashes."
The Campbell story dates to the days before World War II when Sir Malcolm Campbell, Donald Campbell's father, achieved great fame by setting land and water speed records in Britain and America. He took the name Bluebird for his cars and boats from the play of the same name by Maurice Maeterlinck, a Belgian Nobel laureate.
The play, first produced in 1909, tells a story of two children seeking a mystical Blue Bird of happiness. Like the quest for speed, said Ms. Slowe at the museum here, Bluebird represents "the pursuit of the unattainable."
In his lifetime, Donald Campbell set seven world speed records and in January 1967 was trying to beat his own record on water of 276.33 m.p.h. - established in Bluebird K7 three years earlier in Australia. On Jan. 4, he completed a first run, reaching speeds of just under 300 m.p.h. He turned without refueling and was thought to have exceeded 320 m.p.h. on the return leg when, many people believe, the Bluebird K7 hit the ripples rebounding from his wake on the first run and reared out of control. Mr. Campbell was 45 when he died.
In 2001, a diving team led by Bill Smith, an engineer, located the wreckage and the remains of Mr. Campbell. The vessel seemed relatively well preserved. The paintwork of its aluminum body was still blue, though blemished. The tail fin with its British flag was largely intact. Most of the rear of the boat around its jet engine survived the crash, but the cockpit and the stabilizing sponsons in the bow had broken up.
From the beginning, Mr. Smith said: "It would never go on display the way it came out of the water, with a wrecked front end. The family would not allow it. The intention was always to put it back as near as possible to the original, without losing any of the original material."
Indeed, said Gina Campbell, 55, Mr. Campbell's daughter, "she will not go on public display in the condition she is in," adding: "It's too gruesome. It's not for people to peer at where my father lost his life."
"If it's not a fitting memorial to my dad and his achievements, we'll put it back into Coniston," she said, meaning that she would have the vessel lowered back into the lake.
An idea to resolve the debate is to use a paint that becomes fluorescent in ultraviolet light to highlight where restoration of the wreckage has taken place. The Heritage Lottery Fund has agreed to consider a new proposal from Ms. Campbell's supporters in early December.
If the plan succeeds, a version of the original Bluebird could well return to Coniston, not to seek to break speed limits but to inspire something of the awe that drew spectators to watch Mr. Campbell's record-breaking attempts. "I want kids to come along to the Bluebird and say, 'Wow!' " Ms. Campbell said.
And for their parents? "It's the heroic myth," Ms. Slowe said. "As in the Arthurian knights in pursuit of the Holy Grail, Donald Campbell was always proving himself."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/02/international/europe/02bluebird.html