In a rare entry for this blog, we’re turning away from trains and instead focusing on something that has a very slight link with the railways. Welcome to the ONLY hovercraft museum in the world! Located in Southsea in the South East, this is the worlds only (and by extension largest) assembled collection of Hovercraft related objects. If you think this is just going to be about small little hobby hovercraft, you better think again. Taking pride of place in the courtyard is the behemoth that is The Princess Anne (The Hovercraft, not the Princess Royal). This Saunders-Roe SRN4 Mk 3 craft was the largest commercial car carrying hovercraft ever built. At over 300 tons and over 55m long, it could carry 418 passengers and 60 cars. Crossing the English channel in about 35 minutes from Dover to Calais, she was withdrawn from service in 2000 and is the only one of her kind left in the world.
It’s possible to get up inside the craft but as you can see, time has not been kind to her and it’s quite sad to see her literally rusting away from the outside in. Speaking with some of the volunteers on site, there is also a massive problem looming in the future. Due to housing construction at the back of the site, the entire site needs to move forward by several meters. This means that the Princess Anne is also going to have to move, but due to the fragility of the machine, this is going to need surgical levels of precision, coordination and care.
Moving from the car deck into the passenger deck, for something that has holes in the roof and rotting floor, the seats and interior are in reasonable condition and it’s nice to get a taste of what a passenger towards the end of the 20th Century would have experienced.
Access to the cockpit of the craft is out of bounds due to the hazards, however it is still possible to see inside another cockpit from the same class of hovercraft. In the court yard, the cockpit for SRN4 “Swift” sits and allows visitors the chance to get inside and take a look at the controls. The cockpit is all that remains from this particular hovercraft as it was broken up in 2004. If you have ever visited the flight deck of an aircraft, I’m sure you can appreciate the similarities here.
Walking around the site we come across further hovercraft and cockpits which have long since exited service. The picture below on the left shows “Falcon”; an AP1-88/100 which is the last Hovercraft to be built by the British Hovercraft Corporation in 1991. On the right is the oldest craft of her type in the world going back to 1966; the SRN6 Twin Prop “Super 6”. Amazing to think that in 1966-68 you could get a day return ticket across the channel for just £3.50 on her!
There are also a variety of military hovercraft on display as well. One of these is the BH7 and it’s had a very interesting ife. She flew to the Arctic Circle and back being used in various roles such as anti-submarine warfare and mine hunting. She was also the first warship to be fitted with a microwave oven, which is still onboard to this day. In the early days, the Ministry of Defence didn’t know whether to classify hovercraft as naval vessels or aircraft….so they named it both. On the bow of the BH7, the serial number of XW255 can be seen which is a military aircraft serial number. On the rear vertical fin however, is a NATO warship pennant number, P235.
Moving inside one of the main warehouses on site, it’s not just home to functional aircraft that served a purpose in military/public life, but we also have Hovercraft from across TV and film which call the site home. Any James Bond fans will recall the infamous hovercraft opening chase scenes in Die Another Day, and yes, that Hovercraft is here, pictured on the left below. On the right, budding engineers and hobbyists will perhaps remember a program called Scrapheap Challenge where two teams were tasked to make mechanical marvels each week using things they found on the scrap heap. One of those challenges was to build a hovercraft and both of the resulting hovercraft from the show have found their way here.
So how about that tenuous link I mentioned with the railways? You’ll see that The Princess Anne is branded with ‘Hoverspeed’ but this was not the original operator of the craft. Between 1965 and 1981, the operator was Seaspeed. Seaspeed was a jointly owned subsidiary of two rail companies; British Rail and France’s SNCF. It’s initial operating fleet was the SRN6’s for shorter journeys between Cowes on the Isle of Wight and Southampton. In 1968, it procured the larger SRN4’s for the cross-channel ferry services. In 1976, Seaspeed was unable to turn a decent profit from it’s smaller SRN6 services and sold these to rival company Hovertravel; a company who still operate services across the Solent to the Isle of Wight to this day. In 1981, in response to increasing competition and rising costs, Seaspeed merged with rival Hoverlloyd to create the combined entity Hoverspeed. This is the final livery which is donned by The Princess Anne today. The SRN4 fleet operating under Hoverspeed continued until final withdrawal of services in 2000. So there you have it, a very small but undeniable link to the railways.
Inside the café area of the site there is a display area of all sorts of models of Hovercraft, ranging from the large seafaring cross-channel types to the first UK hovercraft ever made, the SRN1 which was launched on 11th July 1959 and subsequently crossed the channel on 25th July of the same year. The creator and person responsible for giving the hovercraft to the world was one Sir Christopher Cockerell.
There is not much that remains of that original SR-N1 now however mounted to one of the walls is the lift fan from the top of the craft. An important slice of history.
The hovercraft may be considered obsolete now and transportation for the masses has evolved but it still has a part to play today in military and agricultural settings predominantly. Hovertravel still operate a Hovercraft service across the Solent to this day using a modern fleet of vessels. Just as Britain gave the world the steam locomotive and railways, we also gave it the Hovercraft, and what a thrilling way to travel it is. I thoroughly enjoyed my time at the Hovercraft Museum and I hope you’ve learnt something from this today. I’ll leave you with footage I took earlier this year from Ryde on the Isle of Wight of a modern hovercraft departing.