FEATURE
Origin
of the
I
slanders are so accustomed to seeing
hovercraft skimming back and forth
across the Solent, that it’s difficult to
imagine life without them.
But, had it not been for the ingenuity
and persistence of Sir Christopher
Cockerell – and his slightly eccentric
experiments using a vacuum cleaner
and two tin cans - this familiar mode of
transport would never have got off the
ground.
Cockerell, who had a small boat hire
company in Norfolk in the 1950s, was
desperate to find a way of making craft
go faster. Having looked at earlier work
by John Thorneycroft and Sons, in which
a small vessel had been partially raised
out of the water by a small engine, he
reckoned that if an entire craft could be
lifted out of the water, it would have no
drag, and could reach a higher speed.
His theory was that instead of
just pumping air under the craft, as
Thornycroft had, it could be channelled to
form a narrow jet around the perimeter
of the craft to create a momentum
curtain – literally, a wall of moving air.
Like many brilliant inventions, though,
this one took belief and staying power.
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hovercraft
Neither the aircraft nor the shipbuilding
industries showed any interest in
developing the idea, as they saw it as
outside their core business.
In fact, Cockerell was even forced to sell
personal possessions just to continue
financing his research. By 1955 he had
built a working model from balsa wood
and filed his first patent for the hovercraft.
A breakthrough finally came when
he approached the Government about
possible defence applications for the
craft. This led to it being placed on the
government’s secret list (which stopped
Cockerell from making it public), where it
remained classified until 1958.
After it was declassified, he was
introduced to the National Research
Development Corporation, which finally
placed an order in the autumn of that
year with Saunders-Roe, for the first fullscale hovercraft.
This prototype craft was designated the
SR-N1 (Saunders-Roe – Nautical One)
and was manufactured under licence
from the NRDC.
By June the following year, 1959 the
SR-N1 - which could carry four men
at a speed of 28 miles per hour – was
unveiled to the press and public. Powered
by an Alvis Leonides radial piston engine
that drove a lift fan, it used the ducted
air for propulsion, and demonstrated its
capability to cross both land and water.
Within weeks, it was shipped to France
and successfully crossed the English
Channel between Calais and Dover in just
over two hours on July 25 1959 – exactly
50 years to the day after the historic
crossing by Bleriot.
Cockerell, meanwhile, had been
appointed Technical Director of
Hovercraft Development Limi ted, a
subsidiary of the NRDC. The company
controlled the patents, which it used to
license several private sector firms to
manufacture craft under the registered
trademark of Hovercraft.
In later life, Cockerell developed many
other improvements to the hovercraft
and attended many hovercraft related
events until his death in 1999, aged 88.
And as for his original SR-N1? It
is kept by The Science Museum at
Wroughton, Wiltshire, along with other
ground-breaking inventions such as
MRI scanners, early computers and deactivated nuclear missiles.