September to December 2002

28th October 2002

Well, a satisfactory result to the inquest. It only took 35 years to get there but it seems to be what everyone wanted and having recovered Donald and had his last moments written officially into the history books, the conspiracy theorists will, hopefully, be silent at last.

Back in 1967 there was a load of discussion about whether to have an inquest at the time. The local Superintendent assumed that there would be an inquest and wrote to the Coroner asking when it was to take place and which witnesses were required. Wishing to take matters to higher authority, the Coroner wrote to the Home Office for guidance, the Registrar General's office was contacted from there and they decided that there was sufficient evidence to allow a "qualified informant" to give information and sign the register. This was to be either a "relative of the deceased or a person who witnessed the accident".

It was then suggested by the Coroner to the Superintendent that one of the Police officers who witnessed the accident be detailed to give the necessary information and sign the register. It was not thought that "any relatives will wish to make the long journey to register the death with the Registrar at Coniston". In essence, it was decided that there was no doubt that the death had taken place, it was highly unlikely that the body would ever be recovered and the only need for an inquest was to register the death and as the Undersecretary of State pointed out, "there is no suggestion of any lack of care and if the Registrar General authorises registration, the relatives will be able to obtain the necessary death certificate".

That was that, and it's where the matter rested until we recovered Donald 34 years later and gave Ian Smith, the present Coroner, the job of sorting it all out. This time there would be an inquest.

As far as I know, there are only four verdicts in a Coroner's court, at least in England. They are Accidental death, unlawful killing or similar, misadventure (which means things like building yourself a tree house in a pylon and getting electrocuted for your trouble) and suicide. You can have "not proven" in a Scottish court but that's all you get to choose from. It was more or less a foregone conclusion from the outset but it had been suggested that Donald was of such a state of mind that he might have been on a do or die mission so suicide kept being whispered.

At the centre of the inquest was
Dr Julian Happian-Smith PhD MSc Btech (Hons) MSAE Cert Ed HE, Consultant Engineer, CH-S consulting

Now that is a totally unnecessary and obscene level of qualification in my opinion but Julian is a wonderful character. About seven feet tall, he arrived for one of our later meetings on the biggest bicycle I've ever seen! It has one brake at the front and one gear at the back so if he meets a hill, he just has to pedal harder. I was astonished to learn that he'd ridden it from Durham to North Shields which is about 30 miles! He laughed at my astonishment and explained that he'd popped down to York on it the previous Saturday. On another occasion he arrived for a meeting with six bags of fresh fish, explaining that he couldn't pass up an opportunity to visit the fish market whilst in town. Myself, the Coroner and a Police officer had to sit in an office full of fish all day.

Besides being absolutely eccentric, Julian is also extremely clever and it fell to him to explain in scientific terms, with no attached emotion, just exactly what went pear shaped on 04th Jan 67. We spent several days getting scruffy, inside, on top of and even underneath K7. Measuring, photographing and scribbling notes. I got the delicious job of extracting a fuel sample for analysis which involved carefully dismantling part of the fuel control system with the engine in place and then putting it all back together again

Julian produced a document about an inch thick but there is one small piece of text which came my way that says just about everything.

"Mr. Donald Campbell, CBE was fatally injured during a high-energy accident on Coniston Water on 4th January 1967 during a World record attempt. Mr. Campbell’s craft was salvaged on 8th March 2001 and his body was recovered on 28th May 2001.

The evidence that the water surface was ruffled from the first run has been established, and this was the cause for the craft to tramp severely prior to the accident. Any analysis of the accident must include the fact that the craft was not stable prior to the accident. Upon the craft somersaulting during the accident, the engine was not running and the throttle had been shut. The brake had also been applied during the accident, but this application was too late to affect the outcome.

The normal safety margin for the craft on smooth water was severely compromised by the conditions at the time just prior to the accident to give a resultant safety margin of less than one degree. This would mean that any relatively minor further disturbance could have rendered the craft unstable and caused the accident.

This analysis concluded that the most likely cause for the accident was the backing off of the throttle at a critical time when the craft was on the verge of instability combined with, for example, a sponson being airborne.

It is most likely that the engine mounting failed during the impacts during the cart-wheeling, which followed the airborne somersault process.

It would seem considerably less probable that inlet tract icing or fuel aeration problems led to the craft instability, and highly unlikely that the craft ran out of fuel, had fuel aeration problems or hit a submerged obstacle on the final run."

Thanks to Dr Julian Happian-Smith for the above quote

The inquest investigated everything from fuel starvation to inlet tract icing, hitting submerged objects to engine mount failure but the final conclusion is just as it was 35 years ago when Ken Norris had a go at the problem. Donald hit his own wake, the boat got unstable, he backed off the throttle and up she went. About the only new thing that we brought to the party was the fact that the water brake was down, a fact that served very nicely to silence those who had whispered about suicide. Clearly you don't slam the brakes on if you no longer care about living.

I was asked to stand up and start the day with a brief history of what Donald was doing in Coniston in 1967. As a non-practising anorak I was a little concerned, I hastily checked my dates and figures with those more knowledgeable folk around me but I couldn't help feeling that there were people better qualified than I to do the job. Never mind, I got there in the end. Next came the pathologist who answered a few questions and then sat down again. Then Julian began his mammoth session and explained the far end of everything whilst remaining as entertaining as ever

It all went a bit peculiar towards the end when Julian added a bit to the transcript of the cockpit recording from Bluebird's final run. It wasn't in his original report but it was added later and it proved erroneous. It took the good Corporal and Robbie Robinson to set the record straight as well as my second trip to the front to explain that yes, I'd heard the tape and no, Donald did NOT say "I'm drawing back" or anything resembling those words. Paul Evans and Robbie brought a flicker of emotion and a glimpse of the human side of the tragedy to proceedings that were otherwise dominated by maths and physics. Donald's ambassadors did him proud.

Finally, Ian Smith, the Coroner, disappeared to compose his conclusions, returning to his desk he told the assembled audience that he was recording a verdict of accidental death. He very eloquently dismissed the suicide theory and explained how Donald Campbell was one of his own boyhood heroes. Ian Smith had a difficult job which he completed in the glare of the media. Outside, the media pounced on Gina as expected. I, for once, got off lightly. It was a rewarding day.

Later that evening there was a meeting of the Bluebird Project in the Ruskin Museum to discuss strategy but that's another story.

	Dr Julian (get orf moy laand) Happian-Smith PhD MSc Btech (Hons) MSAE Cert Ed HE,Consultant Engineer, CH-S consulting
Mr Bill Smith CPT
	Gina gets swamped by the press

One that I forgot about and for which I must thank Graham Beech for setting me straight, there is also an open verdict which presumably means that there was so little left of the tree house that no one could tell what the Hell happened! That'll teach me to research things properly in future.

As a bit of an aside to the ongoing saga of trying to clash this big blue boat back together, here's a little story for you. back in October 1998, we were just about to give up shooting endless miles of side scan sonar images of the wrong bit of Coniston's lake bed when we heard on the radio that a diver had gone missing in Ullswater. Being divers ourselves we immediately tuned in to this snippet and followed the news as the Police under water search units battled impossible conditions. Much as the Rosyth Navy divers had in January 1967. After a week of freezing their bits off they were happy to let us have a go with our fancy yellow sonar system.

Just over a week earlier, keen diver Cliff Purdham had set off with a couple of mates to dive in Ullswater. It was cold and dark, there is nothing in Ullswater to look at and they were planning to dive to 48 metres on air! 7 metres deeper than Bluebird and we used helium mixes so that we could keep our wits about us but divers are slightly mad and we do scary things to ourselves.

Cliff was a family man with two daughters, a Policeman by profession though after a long career his aching back had just retired him at the age of 46. he had just celebrated his silver wedding anniversary. Somewhere on the bottom of the lake during what should have been a fairly routine dive, it all went terribly wrong. In the darkness, he became separated from his diving partner who executed an emergency ascent without injury, Cliff was overcome before he could make the surface.

His partner searched in vain, it was dark and windy, the lake surface was being cut into sharp little waves and he was a long way off the beach. There was no reliable information available about where he'd come up. By the time the Police started looking, they virtually had the entire Southern reach of the lake to search. We arrived with a battered old rigid inflatable and a sonar system that was worth five times as much as the boat to which it was haphazardly rigged. The Police looked at us suspiciously but for want of a better idea, they were content to let us have a go.

With our generator put, put putting away in four inches of water and extra layers of clothing squashed under our drysuits, we trolled up and down the lake towing a bright yellow torpedo on the end of a wire. The weather was atrocious and the lake bed was up and down all over the place making life very difficult for the poor bloke who had to lift the towfish up and down on the end of a cable. Squalls would whistle down off the hill raising small whirlwinds on the water surface before smashing into our boat head on, bringing us to a standstill and crashing our fish into the mud below. Despite this, by the end of our first day searching we had a target and had dropped a marker next to it. the ball was back with the divers.

We’d thought that the target looked like a small boat, in fact we knew that it must be a small boat but it was the only target in the area so it was worth checking out. Lo and behold, it was a small boat. Pretty useless admittedly but it served to wake the Police team up to the fact that we might just have an angle on the problem. We were taken into their support vehicle and given some info that hitherto, we’d not been given. The other diver had ascended from 48 metres. Our small boat had turned up in 42 metres. We needed to be looking a good way further off the beach. Back into the layers of clothing and drysuits. At least out there the lake bed was flat-ish and our towfish puller took a bit longer to end up knackered.

This time we got a real result, an image, clear as day, of a man lying face down with 2 bottles on his back but with this came a problem. Our diver friends were at their limits diving to 48m so they needed to be placed precisely on target and although we had a good image, they still weren’t completely convinced that what they were looking at was the missing diver

It was decided that we’d use a scanning sonar to talk the divers onto the target so we dropped a marker as close as we could guess and all went home. We didn’t have a scanning sonar in those days so it was time to go off and rent one

Using the scanning sonar to get the divers onto the target was easy in theory, the sonar could see both the target and the arriving diver, the surface could speak to the diver via his umbilical and we could tell surface what their diver was up to. Only problem was that the sonar is so incredibly sensitive, it could see everything from crisp packets to individual fish. We know all this now of course but it was a bit confusing at the time. Several times we sent divers blundering over the black plains of billowing silt only to hear through the speaker "it’s a dustbin"! or "found a tree stump Sarge". We were proving our ability to find things, just not very useful things. After a day full of dubious successes, we were sent for by the big cheese. He informed us that everyone had done more than their share, we’d all tried very hard but it was time to officially end our efforts. In fairness to them, we could have done the same exercise every day for another week and no one knew with absolute certainty that we weren’t barking up completely the wrong tree with this target. We had to pack up and go home, dispirited and full of failure.

That’s where the story ended in 1998, we packed up in the freezing cold and looked out over the cold water surface. It told us nothing. By 2000, we’d solved all of our earlier problems. By then we had swimming cameras, two types of sonar including our own scanning sonar system, versatile and powerful mapping software, two onboard navigation systems giving us about 300mm accuracy anywhere in the world and a rather nice boat to put it all on but we’d also inherited a multitude of projects and interesting targets to look for and even Bluebird had to wait in line until we could get back there. It’s well recorded that we went back to Coniston in October 2000 and located Bluebird almost at once, such was the development in 2 years of underwater surveying. Every weekend during the Bluebird thing we set off from Newcastle to Ullswater to stay with Captain Connacher and every time we drove past the small beach at the side of the lake road from which we’d deployed two years earlier in search of Cliff, we’d look out over the water and wonder where he’d got to. Over the course of the Bluebird Project, it was more or less agreed that at the next opportunity we would go back and get him out of there. It was May 2001 when we left Coniston, it took until august 2002 to get a free slot to go to Ullswater but this time we had Predator and a full inventory of kit as well as a very motivated crew.

Going back to our original data from 98 we designed a search grid to the South of where the surviving diver surfaced. That’s the way the Police had been looking and there was good evidence to support the theory but after a day of very thorough survey and a lot of lake bed eliminated we knew that he had to be somewhere else.

Next morning we repeated the performance but this time to the North of the estimated surfacing position. Within half an hour a clear image of a pair of diving bottles marched across the sonar screen. It took a further hour to get a camera onto the target because just as we got set up and began flying the ROV towards the image on the sonar screen, either fate or Capt. Connacher decided to knit one purl one around one of the clump lines. Very soon we had a tangle of cables big enough to knit a new jumper for Alain so were forced to recover and disentangle the lot. On the second attempt we got there and with our hearts in our mouths we crowded around the monitor screen as the camera swam over diving bottles and hoses, glimpses of blue drysuit through the sediment. It was depressing. It was time to inform the authorities. Our old friend Ian Smith was first on the list, he must dread his phone ringing on Sunday afternoons, it’s always when I call him. Ullswater isn’t his patch but I knew that the word would rush through the corridors of power, find its mark, then find us again. Next I phoned the good Sergeant who runs the Underwater Search Unit and told him that he had some work incoming.

	Graeme sitting in wheelhouse of Predator Sonar processor on top left ROV monitor bottom left navigation on right and sonar monitor in centre
Sonar image showing several targets
	Andy Elder the newest member of the team and about to welcome Bill into his family

It was a few days before we could re-assemble the crew. As usual it was volunteer team who had given up their holiday or spare time to come along. We arrived in Glenridding to discover that the weather didn't want us, it took all morning to get Predator kitted, the ropes disentangled, sonar set up and the oil changed in the ROV thrusters. Working on the lake proved to be impossible, the place where we needed to be accurately positioned was being torn this way then the other by a fierce squally wind, horizontal rain added to our discomfort but when the waves started crashing over the back of the boat onto the deck we decided to give it up for the day and find some shelter.

By mid afternoon the storm had abated enough for us to go back to the boat and consider our options. By this time the Police divers had arrived so we had a quick meeting and decided that Predator's crew would go and make another attempt to place the down line. Due to the depth and darkness in Ullswater, the divers would be working at their limits with only about 4 minutes of available bottom time on a lake bed that was very difficult to work on. It was our job to get a line from the surface to the target 165 feet below with an accuracy of about half a metre. It was pitch dark and about 3 hours later when we finally manged to work the line into position. Watching both the weight on the end of the downline and the target on the lake bed on the sonar screen we literally hauled Predator onto position against the weather. Our down line went in within half a metre.

Our Police colleagues were just enjoying the end of a pleasant evening meal when we dripped our bedraggled way through the restaurant to announce that it was their show from here on.

Next morning the lake was in the huff. After spending all of the previous day trying to thwart us, it now lay flat calm, un-moving without a breath of wind. Our marker sat on the surface laid over on its side at the end of the limp down line. Conditions couldn't be better. It took an hour or so to place a set of moorings and when it was done we were tied nose to nose with the Police boat so that we could watch their work on our survey kit and feed back important information to them. In an operation lasting all day, the divers made their descents one by one carefully positioning Cliff for his return to the surface in a specially constructed cradle. Finally, late in the afternoon he was winched to the surface and given over to the care of the Coroner. The Police team are very dedicated professionals, their operation was very impressive and it was a privilege to work with them. Cliff was returned to his family after 4 years and given a proper funeral.

	Police divers eventually ready for action we've been out here for hours while you get at least one engine working
Your supposed to step from one boat to the other and miss the bit in between PC Splash or did you see some underwater joy riders
	Diver surfaces after a 4 minute dive to 48 metres (157 feet)

8th December 2002

It's been a while and I've had a thousand mails saying "what's going on?" as well as being accosted in the pub everywhere I go by total strangers wanting to know whether we've started building the boat yet. Sometimes it can get a bit awkward being the bloke whom everyone associates with Bluebird

What's happened is this, the project is a bit like moving house, you get the big bits into place almost straight away and the rooms look OK but then you've got piles of boxes and bags containing all the little bits and pieces and they take four times as long to sort, position and store than it took to get the TV and video wired up. Get the picture? (no pun intended)

After getting the engineering organised to the point that the boat can be rebuilt and getting the wrinkles ironed out of the museum proposal, we then had the piles of boxes and bags to sort. Detail stuff like finding out what european funding can be brought into play to help us in our efforts, establishing the exact terms on which the museum will look after the boat. Securing a long term future in this ever changing world, calculating how many extra loo rolls and frozen chickens the catering community of Coniston need to buy in on a weekly basis once they've got the boat and where the visitors will park their cars without bringing the whole place to chaotic standstill. Not as exciting as standing on a barge giving orders but all necessary stuff. Well it's done now, or at least it's done to the point where the paperwork can be completed and sent into the HLF. It will need a lot of polishing up as we go but it's good enough to make a start.

I'm hoping that we'll get to start the engineering work ahead of the modifications to the museum because building the boat is the more lengthy process and now that things are moving again I've been in discussion with the various sub contractors to keep our slots open. It's exactly the same with the rebuild as it is with the rest of the project, the little stuff will take longest. We'll get the engine in over a weekend and it'll take the following week to connect it up! It's going to be a full time job.