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"The lure of speed is an urge that most civilized human beings feel.  I know that it has interested and fascinated me ever since the day - quite a number of years back now - when, mounted on a bicycle, I shot past two terrified old ladies down the steep slope of Bickley Hill in Kent at the rate of twenty seven miles an hour.  At least that was the speed estimated by the constable who gave evidence at Bromley Police Court where I was charged the next day with having driven a bicycle to the danger of the public.  I was found guilty by the bench and fined thirty shillings.  At the same time I was given a wigging and a warning, or should I say, words of advice.  "Malcolm Campbell", the presiding magistrate thundered, " you have endangered public life and property on the public highway.  You drove this machine of yours at a totally unnecessary speed.  If you come  before us again, we will take a much more serious view of the matter.  We hope that this will be a lesson to you not to travel so fast in future."  This was a lesson I have never learnt.  Since that day I have certainly managed to steer clear for the most part of speeding convictions, even though I have failed to take the magistrate's advice..."

Malcolm Campbell was born on 1 March 1885, the same year in which both Gottlieb Daimler and Karl Benz  built experimental motor cars.  Benz was the first to manufacture them for sale in 1888, in three and four wheel formats with a single cylinder 1.7 litre horizontal engine at the rear of a tubular frame.  A two speed transmission using belts and chains yielded a maximum speed of 12 mph. 

It would be another 19 years before the Great Western Railway's 4-4-0 steam locomotive "City of Truro" - seen above at Toddington on the Gloucestershire & Warwickshire Railway  -  would claim the first 100 mph on land on 9 May 1904.

Aldous Huxley was to say that speed was the only unique experience of the Twentieth Century, but within that hundred year thrill ride the pursuit of speed on land, air and water would often involve both technological contributions from Gloucestershire and one family name : Campbell.

On 21 July 1904 meanwhile, a 13 1/2 litre opposed piston Gobron Brillie became the first car to exceed 100 mph with a World Land Speed record of 103.56 mph and Frenchman Louis Rigolly at the controls.

Using his exploits as a publicity medium for the motor trading business he had started, Malcolm Campbell raced many cars from 1910 at the Brooklands circuit at Weybridge, Surrey. 

A day before a classic race at Brooklands, Malcolm Campbell went to the Whitehall Theatre to watch a play by the mystical Belgian poet and playwright Maurice Maeterlinck - "The Blue Bird" - based upon the story of the bluebird of happiness always tantalisingly close yet forever beyond reach.  A friend mentioned that The Blue Bird was having " a wonderful run in London".  Inspired, Malcolm Campbell returned home and overnight his Darracq car was painted blue and christened "Bluebird".

Donald Campbell - a replica of whose K7 hydroplane is pictured above at the Lakeland Motor Museum - later said:

"Bluebird was the name given by my father to all his racing craft - Land or Water; and I would have no other for my own.  She carries a mascot, a small silver plate with an enamelled Blue Bird, screwed to the dashboard.  All his craft carried it - and so shall mine."

"Life is an eternal challenge, a variant on Maeterlinck's theme that the Bluebird of Happiness is by the side of each and everyone of us, always within reach, yet, if pursued to catch and possess is beyond our grasp."

From that first Bluebird flowed a stream of cars that Malcolm Campbell raced with skill and distinction at Brooklands and also in continental Grand Prix and road races. In 1923 however Malcolm Campbell began to focus on outright speed and used all his renowned powers of persuasion to coax Sunbeam's French engineer Louis Coatalen into selling him the 350 bhp car in which Kenelm Lee Guinness (pictured above) had set the World Land Speed Record of 133.75 mph in 1922.

This silver and black car - now preserved in the National Motor Museum at Beaulieu - had been built from aluminium in 1920. Powered by an 18.3 litre V-12 prime mover based on Sunbeam's Arab and Manitou aero engines of the First World War, the back axle was differential-less and had first been driven at Brooklands by aviator Harry Hawker. 

Kenelm Lee Guinness's 1922 record was the last to be set at Brooklands, and Malcolm Campbell's next attempts on the World Land Speed record were made on beaches at Saltburn, North Yorkshire, and at Fanoe in Denmark.  In both cases, Campbell was denied international recognition due to the hand-timing apparatus used.

Between 1924 and 1935 Malcolm Campbell broke the World Land Speed Record nine times.  In doing so he became the first man to travel at four miles a minute and at 150, 250 and 300 mph. 

On 21 March 1926 Henry Segrave set a new World Land Speed Record of 152.30 mph at Southport, Lancashire in his 4 litre Sunbeam "Ladybird"

On 28 April 1926 a new World Land Speed Record of 171.01 mph was set by John Godfrey Parry-Thomas in his 400 bhp Higham-Thomas Special car "Babs" at Pendine Sands. 

On 4 February 1927 Malcolm Campbell was to better this by 3 mph to 174.88 in his Napier Campbell Bluebird, also at Pendine.  It turned out to be the last time that the World Land Speed record was to be set in Europe.

Born in 1896 to Anglo-Irish parents in America, Segrave always though of himself as British and had served in the First World War both in the trenches and as a Royal Flying Corps pilot.  A fitness fanatic and ascetic, he even chose tap water over Champagne after winning the 1923 French Grand Prix and was one of the first drivers to wear a toughened crash helmet.  After this record breaking run Henry Segrave became a salesman for the Portland Cement Company and spent his spare hours building a model railway at his home in Kingston, Surrey, although the allure of the Land Speed record was to call him once again.

On 15 February 1928 Malcolm Campbell was at Daytona Beach and his Bluebird powered by a Napier Sprint Lion aero engine achieved an average of 207 mph.

The sponsons between the front and rear wheels housed radiators made by H.H. Martyn & Company of Cheltenham, the ancestor of the Gloster Aircraft Company.  These were filled with ice at the start of a high speed run only to be turned to boiling water at the end by the heat from the Napier Lion.

On 11 March 1929 Sir Henry Segrave drove Golden Arrow to a new Word Land Speed Record of 231.44 mph, beating the previous White Triplex record by 25mph. 

Sir Malcolm Campbell's 1935 Bluebird car was constructed by Thompson and Taylor (Brooklands) Limited, weighed nearly 5 tons and some 90% of the available horsepower was required to overcome wind resistance.  The normal clutch worked through a crash type three speed gearbox to the back axle via a double propeller shaft.  Wheelbase was 13' 8", track 5' and overall length 28' 3".  Fuel was Special Esso-Ethyl and Wakefield Patent Castrol oil was used for lubrication.  The Dunlop tyres had a front pressure of 125 pounds per square inch and rear 110 psi. 

Also of note were the crossed British and American flags painted on the nose of the Lakeland Motor Museum replica pictured above.  The Museum's K7 hydroplane replica - as used in the BBC drama "Across The Lake" - has two Union Flags while  the Bluebird  CN7 car is shown with  British and Australian flags as it sets its new World Land Speed Record at Lake Eyre.

On 3 September 1935 Sir Malcolm Campbell set a new World Land Speed Record at the new venue of Bonneville Salt Flats, Utah, at 301.129mph - over 5 miles a minute.

Thunderbolt was built at Tipton, Staffordshire, was powered by twin Rolls Royce R Type engines positioned side by side behind the driver and measured 30 feet long.  To deliver the combined 4 600 bhp, Thunderbolt had four driving wheels at the back and four unpowered steerable wheels - under teardrop shaped covers - at the front.  Like Golden Arrow before it, Thunderbolt was painted black for its record attempts after its original polished aluminium dazzled the optical timing apparatus used to record its flying mile.

The model pictured above - dating from the late 1930s - was the earliest example of woodwork made by my late father W.G. Drewett and is posed on a wooden coffer which was his last project before his death in 1987.  Unfortunately Thunderbolt's windscreen has been lost over time, but it was this model that first started my interest in the World Land Speed Record and its holders.

With his obsession with reaching 300 mph on land satisfied, Sir Malcolm Campbell turned to the water speed record like his competitor Sir Henry Segrave before him.  With a hydroplane using the Rolls Royce R engine from his record car he set two new records in 1937 and a third in 1938. 

Back at Bonneville Salt Flats in the summer of 1938 however, a big, shy 39 year old named John Rhodes Cobb had hired Reid Railton and to design him an elegant tear-drop shaped Railton Mobil Special car powered by a pair of Napier Lion engines to challenge Eyston's tail-finned Thunderbolt - at seven tons the largest and heaviest car ever to take on the World Land Speed Record in Utah and twice the weight of Cobb's machine.

On 27 August 1938 Thunderbolt had set up a new World Land Speed Record of 345.20 mph which Cobb, on 15 September, raised to 350.2 mph.  Eyston then topped this at 357.9 mph the next day.

Cobb - a racing driver at Brooklands between the two World Wars - returned to Utah in the summer of 1939 and on 23 August took the World Land Speed Record to 369.74 mph as well as taking the 5 and 10 km records off Sir Malcolm Campbell.

As might be expected, no World Land Speed record attempts were made during World War II although the global conflict proved a catalyst for new technology that was to further accelerate fresh endeavours.

Despite this, the Railton Mobil Special, designed by Reid Railton and driven by John Cobb, which celebrated the State of Utah's centenary with a new World Land Speed Record at Bonneville Salt Flats, USA of 394.20 mph on 16 September 1947 was still powered by two Napier Lion piston engines. The Railton Mobil Special is now preserved at Think Tank, Birmingham, having been acquired by Dunlop who made its tyres, and was only eclipsed as a World Land Speed Record car driven by  piston engines in 1965.

While Cobb became the first driver to reach 400 mph, during 1947- 48 Sir Malcolm Campbell's Bluebird K4, re-engined with a de Havilland Goblin jet engine from a Vampire fighter, failed to break the existing World Water Speed Record on Coniston Water.

Donald initially worked in the City of London, then as a travelling salesman, later entering into partnership engaged in the manufacture of machine tools.   During World War II he had joined the Royal Air Force but had not been selected for pilot training as he had wished due to the discovery of a heart weakness caused by the effects of rheumatic fever as a child. Donald Campbell later developed an interest in powerboat racing and, following the death of Sir Malcolm Campbell, purchased Bluebird K4  from his father's executors.

In 1945 he married Daphne Harvey and their daughter Gina was born in 1946.  After the couple divorced, Donald married Dorothy McKegg in 1952, divorced her in 1957 and in 1958 married Tonia Bern.

In 1949 Bluebird K4 - now fitted again with a Rolls Royce R-Type piston engine - still failed to break the World Water Speed Record on Coniston Water while in 1950 Slo-Mo-Shun IV, designed by Ted Jones and piloted by Seattle car dealer Stanley Sayres, set a new World Water Speed Record on Lake Washington, USA, at 160.32 mph.  Indeed Slo-Mo-Shun IV reached 178.497mph in 1952 and also won the Harmsworth international motor boat Trophy for the United States.  The 28' long Ventnor type three point shovel nosed hydroplane had been launched in 1949 by the Jensen Motor Boat Company and was powered by an Allison liquid cooled V12 engine similar to those used by Lockheed P-38 Lightning fighter aircraft.

Donald Campbell and his team converted Bluebird K4 to prop riding and later in 1950 took Bluebird K4 to 152 mph before winning the Oltranza Cup race at Lake Garda, Italy, covering four laps of a 5 mile triangular course in 1951.  He then made another record attempt with Bluebird K4 on Coniston Water in May 1951.  However the craft, travelling at an estimated 160 mph, hit a submerged log, suffered a structural failure and sank.  After salvage, K4 was stripped of useable parts and the hull burned. 

The Lakeland Motor Museum replica seen above was created for the Rolls Royce Centenary display at the 2004 Goodwood Festival of Speed.

Crusader had been designed by Reid Railton and Peter Du Cane and was built by Vosper's of Portsmouth - famous for their Wartime torpedo boats.  Its format was a three point hydroplane with outriggers at the rear of the craft and thrust came from a De Havilland Ghost gas turbine - very similar to the Goblin unit that Sir Malcolm Campbell used in Bluebird K4.  Cobb's Crusader project was also assisted by Castrol Oil, whose competitions manager was none other than George Eyston, who had been awarded the OBE in 1948

Launched in 1955, the £ 25 000 original Bluebird K7 was fitted with a Vickers Beryl turbojet which had been taken from TG 263, the surviving Saunders Roe SR A1 jet flying boat subsequently preserved at the Skyfame Museum at Staverton.  However, at low speeds water spray was sucked into K7's intakes causing the turbojet to flame out.  This was cured by the addition of transparent intake shields, rear buoyancy reduction and other minor modifications.

The chassis was built from a light but strong aeroweb sandwich of light alloy around resin bonded light alloy honeycomb: the ancestor of the crash protection used in Formula 1 cars today.  Lew Norris ( 20 September 1924 - 13 February 2009 ) also invented the modern automatic car seat belt and the go-kart and served his apprenticeship with Harland & Wolff at its London docklands shipyard building landing craft for D-Day.

The Proteus was the engine used on the "whispering giant" Bristol Britannia airliner and would go on to be used on the SRN4 Mountbatten Class hovercraft.  The Proteus used in Bluebird CN7 was unique in having a drive shaft at both ends to power each axle, thus giving it four wheel drive. 

In 1960 Bristol Aero Engines merged with Armstrong Siddeley to form Bristol Siddeley which in turn merged with Rolls Royce in 1966. Armstrong Siddeley itself had been purchased from luxury car and aero engine builder J.D. Siddeley by Hawker Aircraft to form Hawker Siddeley from 1935.

More immediately from Donald Campbell's point of view, on 5 September 1963 Craig Breedlove had set a World Land Speed Record of 418.312 mph at Bonneville Salt Flats in his jet propelled Spirit of America although this was internationally recognised as a motor cycle rather than a car due to having three wheels.  A rocket powered Bluebird CN8 got as far as the mock up stage but by his time British money was becoming scarce for such a project.

Meanwhile, 5 October 1964 saw the four wheeled Wingfoot Express designed by Walt Arfons, driven by Tom Green, powered by a WH J46 jet engine, set a new World Land Speed Record at Bonneville Salt Flats for the USA at 413.10 mph.

On 25 September 1997 Thrust SSC's two Rolls Royce Spey engines powered it past 700 mph to 714.144 mph and on 15 October 1997 the first Supersonic World Land Speed Record was recorded with a maximum velocity of 760.343 mph.  The suspension for Thrust SSC, pictured above, was partly designed by Gloucestershire based Dowty Hydraulics.

The new World Land Speed Record car - called Bloodhound SSC - is unique in combining a Eurojet EJ200 engine from a Eurofighter Typhoon with the first new rocket motor built in Britain for 20 years.  The team behind the project hopes to reach 1 050 mph, also beating the low-altitude speed record for aircraft of 994mph.

In practical terms, Squadron Leader Green will face 2G of acceleration - the equivalent of 0 to 60 mph in 1.5 seconds - as the gas turbine reaches 350 mph in 40 seconds while a Ford Cosworth Formula 1 piston engine pumps hydrogen peroxide fuel to the 12' long 18" rocket, the largest of its kind ever designed in Europe and capable of producing 27 500 lb of thrust – equivalent to about 80 000 horsepower, the combined output of 95 Formula 1 cars.  Deceleration however will be at 3G - the same as 60 mph to zero in 1 second or an average car crash - achieved by aircraft style dive brakes rather than parachutes before Bloodhound SSC is turned and prepared for a second run in the opposite direction.  Under FIA rules, the average speed of the two runs - which must take place less than one hour apart - will determine the recognised achievement.

The Ministry of Defence is backing the project, and Whitehall chiefs hope young people will be inspired to get involved in science, technology, mathematics and engineering.  A team of five Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers experts will help build and maintain the car over the next two years in the UK, and be on hand during the record attempts in South Africa next year and in 2014.

From Camille Jenatzy passing 60 mph to Andy Green travelling at Mach 1.016 had taken less than a century, but a century in which mankind had nearly destroyed itself with nuclear weapons and had flown to the Moon, enabling it to look back on the blue jewel-like oasis Earth set in the infinity of space and realise that all of us have to live on one planet together.

A British Electric Land Speed Record was set on Pendine Sands, Carmarthenshire, on 19 August 2000 at 137.15 mph by Donald Wales, son of Jean Campbell and nephew of Donald Campbell, in Bluebird Electric 2000.  Donald Wales was inspired to take up battery power after his young son Joe developed asthma and said in 1998:

"If I can show that electric cars do not have to be slow and cumbersome, I will have made a lasting mark for the health of my child."

Gloucestershire's involvement in this feat came from Crouch and Hold of Gloucester who provided the team's uniforms, Quedgeley based Eventageous who looked after the team's publicity and Spirax Sarco of Cheltenham supplied the British Steam Car's main steam bypass and throttle valves.

The 3 tonne British Steam Car - made from carbon fibre composites and aluminium on a steel frame - burned liquid petroleum gas in 12 boilers to raise 400 degree centigrade superheated steam to drive its turbine prime mover.  As such it consumed a third of its weight in demineralised water in just 25 minutes, with 50 litres a minute being exposed to three megawatts of heat and steam entering the turbine at twice the speed of sound.

Indeed, between July 1955 and December 1964 Donald Campbell set World Water Speed Records on 7 different occasions and on the basis of this was made Managing Director of Dowty Marine, which had acquired the manufacturing rights to a New Zealand designed motorboat which was propelled by jets of water rather than a conventional propeller.  This could not only travel very quickly but could also operate in very shallow water, as Donald Campbell was to demonstrate on the gravel pit lakes at South Cerney in Gloucestershire.  Donald Campbell's Dowty Marine company car was a Cotswold blue Mark II Jaguar with the registration 7759 DD.

In 1965 a  5 000lb thrust Bristol Siddeley Orpheus jet engine - originally designed for a plastic cruise missile - replaced the heavier and less powerful Metro-Vick Beryl and a tail from a Folland Gnat jet trainer was added to Bluebird hydroplane K7 along with a single tail mounted air-speed indicator.

Kerosene consumption on the three point hydroplane was 650 gallons per hour as it sucked in three tons of air per minute.  Beam was 10'6", length 26' 43/4" and the vessel weighed 2 1/2 tons in working order.  .

In 1988 BBC Television screened "Across The Lake", a drama documentary about Donald Campbell with Anthony Hopkins in the lead role while ten years later in 1998 Britain's Royal Mail issued a set of postage stamps commemorating wheel driven World Land Speed Record cars with Malcolm Campbell's 151 mph Bluebird of 1925 on the 20p stamp,  Henry Segraves 152 mph Sunbeam of 1926 on the 26p, John Parry-Thomas's 171mph Babs of 1926 on the 30p, John Cobb's 394 mph Railton Mobil Special of 1947 on the 43p and Donald Campbell's 403 mph Bluebell CN7 of 1964 on the 63p.

In June 1995 meanwhile rock band Marillion released their album "Afraid of Sunlight" with the track "Out of This World" inspired by Donald Campbell and his final record attempt.  This in turn inspired Newcastle based inventor and explorer Bill Smith to make a new search of the deeply silted floor of Coniston Water in which he found the wreckage of Bluebird K7 late in 2000.  Although there was much debate within the Campbell family and those close to them about what was appropriate to do next, their decision was to raise the wreck to stop souvenir hunters pillaging it.  Under the direction of Bill Smith, Bluebird K7 once again saw daylight on 8 March 2001.

On Monday 28 May 2001 Donald Campbell's remains were also recovered from Coniston Water and his funeral was later held at St Andrew's Church, Coniston where he is buried.  In November 2002 an inquest returned a verdict of accidental death.

By late 2007 the chassis of K7 had been stripped down and rebuilt by PDS Engineering of Nelson, Lancashire, allowing the restoration project led by Bill Smith to restore the vehicle to working order to continue.  The first rivet of the restored vessel was closed by Gina Campbell on 2 December 2008 and it is currently hoped to have Bluebird K7 planing across Coniston Water in 2011 before long term display at the nearby Ruskin Museum.

Amazingly, 98% of the restored K7 will be original due to the engine having acted as a sacrificial anode and corroded where other components had not.  All parts added to the completed project were authentic to the time of building including period radio equipment and rivets made to a pattern of 1945.

During the restoration process, it was found that Bluebird K7's water brake had been deployed - evidence that he had struggled to stay in control of his increasingly unstable craft and putting paid to rumours that Donald Campbell had killed himself to avoid his creditors.  However, withdrawal of support from sponsors such as BP - worried not only about the risks of the K7 attempt but also that public attention was now focussed on the Space Race - added to the pressures facing Donald Campbell at the time.

Indeed, before his own death in 2005, designer Ken Norris was able to examine Bluebird K7 and reach the conclusion that Donald Campbell's fatal crash was caused by a combination of an inherent design flaw in the hydroplane and, ironically, by the pilot throttling back the Bristol Siddeley Orpheus engine in an attempt to slow down.

In his book "The Bluebird Years - Donald Campbell and the Pursuit of Speed" Ken Norris explained that the dynamics of K7 when travelling at 300 mph allowed its nose to pitch up only 6 degrees from the surface of the water before it risked becoming airborne.  What neither he nor anyone else in the 1960s realised was that Bluebird's triangular design meant that choppy conditions caused the hydroplane to "tramp" - or roll from side to side in a skewed motion - and this phenomenon caused the nose to rise by five degrees.  The only counter the nose lifting in these circumstances was the sustained thrust of the engine.  Donald Campbell, however, throttled back the gas turbine just before he crashed.  Although the lake had been perfectly smooth for the outward run, the return was made against Bluebird's own wake, the wake of the water brake used to slow it down towards the fuel boat and a slight swell, which itself could have pitched the nose up by one and a half degrees.  In addition, Bluebird was almost out of fuel at the moment of the crash, and a full tank might would have added weight to counter aerodynamic lift.

In July 2008 a pair of "Donald Campbell" name plates from  Virgin Super Voyager train 221 135 were presented to K7s prospective new home of the Ruskin Museum at Coniston.  One was for display there and another was set to be auctioned to raise money for the restoration project.

Further information on the Campbells and World Land and Water Speed Records can be found at

www.acrossthelake.com

www.bluebirdproject.com

www.bluebirdsupportersclub.com

www.lakelandmotormuseum.co.uk

www.racingcampbells.com