Bluebird, the hydroplane that reached record-breaking speeds, has returned to the water for the first time in more than 50 years after it crashed killing its pilot, Donald Campbell.
The jet-powered boat successfully floated in a loch on the Isle of Bute in Scotland on Saturday, in an operation watched by his daughter Gina.
Project manager Bill Smith, who has worked on bringing up the wreck and restoring it for 22 years, hailed the achievement.
“It was like someone was making a Donald Campbell movie and they’d left a prop bobbing around – it was pretty good,” he said.
Campbell’s body, with his race suit still intact, was pulled from the Cumbria lake along with the wreckage from the depths in 2001.
Volunteers have worked to restore the boat to near its original state, but they said the engine had to be replaced.
Having broken eight world speed records on water and land in the 1950s and 1960s, Campbell was attempting to break his own water speed record of 276mph when he was killed.
Campbell, the son of speed record breaker Sir Malcolm Campbell, was posthumously awarded the Queen’s Commendation for Brave Conduct.
