Donald Campbell’s Bluebird takes to the water again, watched by his daughter

Clutching her father’s mascot teddy Gina Campbell yesterday watched as the speed boat in which he was killed returned to the water for the first time since his death half a century ago.
She was just 17 when she was told Donald Campbell’s Bluebird K7 had crashed and sunk in Coniston Water while attempting to set a daring new speed record.
So it was with mixed emotions that Ms Campbell yesterday looked on as the hydrofoil slid into Loch Fad, on the Isle of Bute in Scotland, following a painstaking restoration programme.
With her was Mr Whoppit, the teddy bear Campbell took with him for his record attempt and which was later found floating among the debris.
After a series of false starts yesterday, during which Bluebird got stuck on the uneven jetty and the wrong fuel was used, the hydrofoil was driven across Loch Fad for a series of initial test runs to see how it handles.
“It’s unbelievable. She looks absolutely wonderful. My father would have loved this,” Ms Campbell told the Sunday Telegraph. “Of course it’s bittersweet for me seeing someone else in my daddy’s seat, but everything good is worth sharing.”
The unveiling of Bluebird K7 was the latest chapter in a story that has continued to fascinate the British public since 1967, when it flipped over while travelling at more than 300mph.
The accident came as Campbell was attempting to beat his own water speed record of 276.33mph set three years earlier.
The badly damaged craft lay on the bed of the Lake District’s Coniston Water until it was raised in 2001 by Bill Smith, an engineer who has since been lovingly restoring the boat to her former glory.
The ultimate aim is to get the hydrofoil to the point where it can once again be driven across Coniston Water, near the spot where it sank, killing Campbell at the age of 45.
But Ms Campbell has made it clear there are no plans to take her the sort of velocity achieved by her father, for one simple reason. She does not want anyone else to lose their lives in the pursuit of speed.
“Bluebird looks wonderful, but nothing would be worse than something going wrong again and somebody being hurt,” she told The Telegraph. “Things happen when young men get hold of something that can go very very fast, but I hope good sense prevails. It’s just not worth risk to machine or man.”
Ms Campbell, who received the news of her father’s death while she was working abroad at a ski resort, is looking forward to the day when Bluebird K7 returns to Coniston.
“It will be a wonderful tribute to my father’s achievements,” she said.
Campbell remains the only person to set both world land and water speed records in the same year, 1964.
From 1955 he set seven world water speed records in K7 and when he died he had been trying to go one better than the 276.33mph he had previously achieved in December 1964.
For Campbell speed ran in the family.
His father Malcolm broke a series of speed records on land and on water during the 1920s and 1930s using a number of vehicles named Bluebird, before dying after a series of strokes in 1948 at the age of 63 – one of the few land speed record holders of his era to die of natural causes.
Donald Campbell began using his father’s old boat Bluebird K4 to set his own records, but after it suffered a structural failure at 170 mph in 1951 he developed the K7.
Ms Campbell, who  in 1990 Gina broke her own World Water Speed Record in New Zealand, achieving 166 mph in a three point hydroplane, recalled receiving the news of her father’s death while she was working abroad at a ski resort. “I was just 17, working abroad at the time I got the phone call. My mind just went to nothing. It went blank.
“I had never really feared for my father’s life because he always came home. It was always the reward that counted and not the risk.”
Mr Smith was inspired to recover and restore Bluebird K7 at his yard in Newcastle after hearing the Marillon track Out of This World, an ode to Donald Campbell’s bravery.
After 17 years of painstaking work on the boat yesterday’s events were emotional for him too.
“Every part has been cleaned, repaired, put back together. It has been completely without compromise,” he said. “Wouldn’t use the wrong screw, wouldn’t use the wrong gauge, it is absolutely how its supposed to be.”
Additional reporting by Gabriel Day