Bid to keep hovercraft history afloat

SRN4 Hovercraft Princess Margaret arriving at Lee on Solent. Picture: YouTube.com

SRN4 Hovercraft Princess Margaret arriving at Lee on Solent. Picture: YouTube.com

Published Feb 9, 2016

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London - Once they were the future of sea travel.

Able to carry hundreds of passengers and dozens of cars across the English Channel in half an hour in good conditions, hovercraft would speed past jealous ferry passengers and were sufficiently glamorous to count James Bond as a customer.

But those days seem a long time ago, and the last remaining Dover to Boulogne hovercraft – long since decommissioned following the advent of modern catamarans and the Channel Tunnel – face the scrapheap.

Hoverspeed vessels have been on display at the Hovercraft Museum in Lee-on-the-Solent since 2000. However, the British government agency that owns them says it needs the land for housing, so the vessels have been fenced off, with their future uncertain.

They could yet be saved, however, thanks to an effort backed by Sir Ranulph Fiennes and Anne, Princess Royal.

Despite being kept at the museum, the SRN4 category hovercraft and the site where they are stored are owned by the Homes and Communities Agency rather than the museum trust.

There has been a protracted legal battle between transport heritage enthusiasts and the agency, which wants to use the land to build homes and an innovation centre. More than 10 000 people in two days have signed the museum’s petition, with the same number adding their names to a change.org petition.

The National Historic Ships Register has stepped in to see if it can save the hovercraft although, at 47 years old, it does not meet its criterion. A vessel needs to be 50 years old to qualify for the register.

“We feel at least one of the hovercraft should be saved from destruction, to pass on to next generations,” said museum trustee Warwick Jacobs.

“We’ve also had calls from France, where they believe it’s as much a French hovercraft as it is British. As many French people and cars travelled on it as British.

“They are talking about saving one on behalf of the government for Calais, although it’s early days. And we would have one for the Hovercraft Museum.”

Jacobs said the museum would, if necessary, clear the Princess Margaret – which featured in the Bond film Diamonds Are Forever – out of the way to be scrapped, or sent to France, to provide space for the Homes and Communities Agency and allow the Princess Anne to be saved.

Sir Ranulph Fiennes, a museum patron who took a hovercraft along the River Nile in 1969, has told the trustees he will do what he can to help the cause. The royal family do not speak publicly on political decisions, but it is understood Princess Anne’s office has been in touch with the Hovercraft Museum to express support.

“There has been an enormous response from the public worldwide,” Jacobs said. “People in Australia and South Africa have been in touch, supporting us, which has left us, as well as the land agents, quite startled.

“And to be told just a few weeks after we have reopened the museum, after two years of refurbishment, that the hovercraft giants can’t stay here is a catastrophe. The hovercraft are as British as the Mini or Concorde. Once they’re gone you won’t see them again.”

The Independent

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