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The stand-off between Smith and the Museum drags on like a
Dickensian backstory. Asked what the Museum’s trustees would
like to see done, Slowe says: “Get Bluebird independently assessed
so that she can be insured. We would like to see her run on Conis-
ton and more than once if she is up to it, but we don’t know if she
is. Why has it taken so long to get her back into good condition
after running her on Loch Fad?”
Smith is more optimistic. “You can see the outcome with total
clarity,” he says. “One day Bluebird will be in the Museum some
of the year, and we will run it the rest of the year. This clarity
takes time to sink in. We are going to have to go down the line a
bit further. The hardest part of this entire project is dealing with
negative people. We could say bollocks to the lot of you, put Blue-
bird on a wagon, and off we go.
“The argument that makes my blood boil is, ‘Our trustees
are being very patient in waiting for you...’” adds Smith. “All our
enthusiasts, our fans, sponsors, donors and people who gave us
pieces of aluminium have waited 10 years for Bluebird to get wet!”
What this project needs is a toff to bang heads together. May-
be the Dukes of Devonshire and Buccleuch, respective owners
of Coniston and the surrounding land, can intercede. I asked
Bute if Bluebird might fly on Bute once more? “We’d have her
in a flash,” he says.
The Bluebird story distils down to a chivalric romance: a knight
in shining aluminium who ventured abroad, endured great suf-
fering and performed acts of valour, then returned home exalted
or chastened. Not only did Campbell physically go abroad, but he
entered realms of speed that were not then known or understood,
and returned either injured or triumphant or not at all. Smith has
a quest of his own to recover and rebuild Bluebird. The romance,
however, looks like ending up as a very contemporary procedural
impasse. Meanwhile, Bluebird sits in a scruffy garage in North
Shields awaiting resurrection.
They don’t make them like Campbell any more. He evokes an
archaic and class-ridden ideology of leadership, loyalty, discipline
and courage derived from the public-school ethos and imperial-
istic adventure. Yet his flame still burns. The myth of man and
machine endures.
“This is why the Bluebird Project is such a success,” says Smith.
“You have the Campbell thing to tap into, the B o y’s O w n hero. You
also have this story of a bunch of guys and girls in a workshop in
North Shields. It has got something for everybody. It amazes me.
And I was here from the start. To watch so many people doing
that gives me massive pride. And yet nothing has surprised me.
If you put your mind to something, you can do it.”park-and-ride, litterbins, marshals and so on...because...Blue-
bird wasn’t ready. Or was it the other way round? It is hard to
tell. Frustrated at what he saw as slow progress and anxious
to test Bluebird away from the public gaze, Smith emailed
the Mount Stuart Trust which owns the Bute Estate in Scot-
land. His email landed on the desk of the Marquess of Bute.
Racing as Johnny Dumfries, the Marquess is a veteran of 15
Formula One grands prix for Lotus, and a winner of 24 Hours of
Le Mans. He knows a thing or two about motorsport. “I looked
at this email and thought, ‘What. On. Earth...?’”
Paying Bluebird a visit, Bute immediately spotted Smith’s sin-
gular enterprise. “He is a brilliant engineer,” he says. “Bluebird is
a very significant piece of twentieth-century British engineering.
The story of Malcolm and Donald needs to be acknowledged; so
does Bill’s achievement.”
I put it to Bute that what Donald did was essentially mean-
ingless. It didn’t lead to anything except Health & Safety. Judg-
ing a piece of engineering by its speed is out of step with today’s
low-carbon zeitgeist. Bute leaps to Campbell’s defence. “It is in
man’s nature,” he says. “Why push boundaries and try to break
records? What Campbell did, achieving those speeds in relatively
crude machinery, was a massive act of commitment and belief.”W
hen Smith asked if Bluebird might have a spin on
Loch Fad, Bute saw a “compelling story”. The en-
tire community of Bute threw its weight behind the
idea. In August 2018, Bluebird flew once more. Ardent crowds
made the pilgrimage to watch two pilots perforate the air: Stew
Campbell, a former Red Arrows pilot, clocked up 131 mph; Ted
Walsh, a “hydroplane hooligan”, pushed the needle to 157 mph.
“There was a lot of ra-ra-ra, but there was also a lot of ‘Oh
shit!’,” says Smith. The canopy blew off, she leaked like a sieve,
and her engine flamed-out, but the magic was still there. “People
who remember Bluebird from the 1960s stood crying,” Smith
recalls. “They couldn’t believe they were not seeing a ghost.”
“So you’ve got that, or you’ve got a machine stuck in a museum
in the middle of nowhere,” he adds. “There is no contest.”
The trustees of the Ruskin Museum were quietly apoplectic at
the Bute event. They were horrified at the liability to which they
might have been exposed in the event of an accident, and angry
that Smith had failed to get their express permission for the trip.
“The trustees thought that there was a risk that if anyone was
hurt in connection with Bluebird, or if it ran amok among spec-
tators, Bill Smith would dump it on our lap,” says Vicky Slowe.
“We don’t dispute that he has done a fantastic job on Bluebird,
but we are concerned about the potential charges if anything goes
wrong. The trustees want to know the risks. After all, Donald
Campbell insured both his life and Bluebird.”Is it a Bird? Is it a Plane?
Left: Travelling at great speed on Coniston Water, Bluebird almost takes flight,
making contact with the water in only three places. Above: photograph of young
Gina, a gifted rider, on a horse with her father by her side, and a photograph of
Donald with his team in front of Bluebird, both from Gina’s family albumVANITY FAIR EN ROUTE SEPTEMBER 2019
09-19Bluebird.indd 54 10/07/2019 16:23