On the trail of the Hovercraft

[Robert]

Quite a lot of my colleagues, on both sides of the Channel, are ex-Hoverspeed, including a former First Officer, crew members and 'ground staff'; they seemed to have enjoyed it, though most were glad to leave once the 'Vomit Comet' started.

 

I can well believe it!  It was a terrible thing.

 

I crossed a few times in the 90s on the Sea Cat and found that it was best to just stay put in one place in anything more than a slight swell.  It had a very uncomfortable motion.

 

At one point, I heard a rumour that the Sea Cats used to carry a resident welder who was there to weld bits on as they dropped off!  Probably apocryphal, or at least exaggerated - but I must admit that the build quality never appeared to be that good.

[Fat Controller]

I can well believe it!  It was a terrible thing.

 

I crossed a few times in the 90s on the Sea Cat and found that it was best to just stay put in one place in anything more than a slight swell.  It had a very uncomfortable motion.

 

At one point, I heard a rumour that the Sea Cats used to carry a resident welder who was there to weld bits on as they dropped off!  Probably apocryphal, or at least exaggerated - but I must admit that the build quality never appeared to be that good.

I shall ask.

Strangely, I found them at their worst, not in a really heavy sea, but when there was a Force 4 or 5 crosswind. This, couple with the engine vibration, always used to make me wonder if having breakfast had been such a good idea.

[Kickstart]

Hi

 

I used the sea cats quite often. They could be a bit rough, but they were always freezing cold (I used to get on and look for a heater outlet and sit below that!)

 

Worst for me was getting on once and finding my spot. Then a large family got on an sat beside me. Kids, parents, grandparents, etc. And as soon as grandmother sat down she put her head in a sick bag ready. We hadn't even moved by that stage!

 

All the best

 

Katy

[eastwestdivide]

On the Airfix SRN4 kit - I had two of them. One, at the age of about 13, sort of got finished, with the usual glue all over the transparent window plastic. I think it went out of the upstairs window in flames along with a lot of other Airfix a few years later. The other I got as an adult, after using one for a trip across the channel. Construction was going well until I got caught up in the flex of a heavy table lamp that was illuminating the work, and you can guess the rest. I might still have the pieces.

 

My grandparents lived in Ramsgate, always referring to them as "the hovers". You could hear them from all over Thanet. We had a family day trip from Pegwell Bay to Calais one summer (using the British Visitor's Passport, a sort of short-term cheaper alternative to a full passport), and I'm sure I kept the unused sick bag as a memento - "Is it worth owt?" as they say round here.

As an adult, I used the Dover service once, as part of a trip to the south of France. Oddly, I didn't feel any seasickness and my partner did. Usually any form of boat or ship and more than a slight breeze means I'm the one who's green around the gills, and she's normally fine. Seem to recall it as a bumpy ride rather than the slower swaying of a conventional ship.

[Robert]

I used the sea cats quite often. They could be a bit rough, but they were always freezing cold (I used to get on and look for a heater outlet and sit below that!)

 

Worst for me was getting on once and finding my spot. Then a large family got on an sat beside me. Kids, parents, grandparents, etc. And as soon as grandmother sat down she put her head in a sick bag ready. We hadn't even moved by that stage!

 

Thinking about it, you are right.  They were usually cold.  I wonder if they had a bad heating system, or whether it was deliberate to reduce the number of people throwing up?!?

 

Unrelated to the Hovercraft, or the Sea Cat, but coming back from Calais one evening in Townsend Thoresen days on the Pride of Free Enterprise, we arrived to find a good Force 8 blowing, and the sick bags were out.

 

Things were reasonably Ok until we got out of the shadow of the coast, and headed into the middle of the channel - then things started to lump up a bit.  A very upper-crust family came down and sat in the next seating bay to us.  It was clear that the poor lad they had with them was not feeling at his best!

 

"I don't feel very well" says the lad

 

No, it doesn't look as if you do, thinks I.

 

"Nonsense Tarquin, you're always fine on the yacht" or something to that effect, says the Father in a fog-horn voice loud enough to hear at the other end of the ship.

 

No sooner has he uttered these words the child projectile vomits all over his fathers tailored suit.

 

I spent the rest of the voyage with my nose buried in my book - trying to avoid the chain reaction that was affecting many of the other passengers!

 

 

As an adult, I used the Dover service once, as part of a trip to the south of France. Oddly, I didn't feel any seasickness and my partner did. Usually any form of boat or ship and more than a slight breeze means I'm the one who's green around the gills, and she's normally fine. Seem to recall it as a bumpy ride rather than the slower swaying of a conventional ship.

 

Yes - it was quite a bumpy ride.  With a tendency to dive and roll with the peaks and troughs when things got a little rough!

[Vistisen]

Thinking about it, you are right.  They were usually cold.  I wonder if they had a bad heating system, or whether it was deliberate to reduce the number of people throwing up?!?

 

Unrelated to the Hovercraft, or the Sea Cat, but coming back from Calais one evening in Townsend Thoresen days on the Pride of Free Enterprise, we arrived to find a good Force 8 blowing, and the sick bags were out.

 

Things were reasonably Ok until we got out of the shadow of the coast, and headed into the middle of the channel - then things started to lump up a bit.  A very upper-crust family came down and sat in the next seating bay to us.  It was clear that the poor lad they had with them was not feeling at his best!

 

"I don't feel very well" says the lad

 

No, it doesn't look as if you do, thinks I.

 

"Nonsense Tarquin, you're always fine on the yacht" or something to that effect, says the Father in a fog-horn voice loud enough to hear at the other end of the ship.

 

No sooner has he uttered these words the child projectile vomits all over his fathers tailored suit.

 

I spent the rest of the voyage with my nose buried in my book - trying to avoid the chain reaction that was affecting many of the other passengers!

 

 

 

Yes - it was quite a bumpy ride.  With a tendency to dive and roll with the peaks and troughs when things got a little rough!

 

I have done the Harwich to Esbjerg (Denmark) trip serveral times before it stopped. One one occasion when the café was shut due to cups and saucers not staying on tables. I had a couple of small children with me who were fine and annoyed that the ball bath room in the play area was shut. I asked a rather green looking member of staff why and got the classic reply "Because when you brat pukes up in there, I have to wash every single f*****g ball" Fair enough I thought! 

[Kickstart]

Thinking about it, you are right.  They were usually cold.  I wonder if they had a bad heating system, or whether it was deliberate to reduce the number of people throwing up?!?

Maybe. I seem to be fairly good for not having sea sickness (but sickness from the smell of sick is rather different!). My guess (very much a guess) was that it was a cost saving measure.

 

All the best

 

Katy

[jjb1970]

USN MSLC used to charter an Austal built fast ferry Westpac Express, it was a source of mystery how the builders ever got the ships flag to accept the rule set she was built to for the service pattern she ended up doing. The USN have built their own purpose built high speed design now and the Westpac Express ended up being sold to an Irish outfit.

[eastwestdivide]

Over on the German Drehscheibe forum, someone's just posted some pics of Boulogne hoverport as it is now, with sand dunes starting to take over.

http://www.drehscheibe-online.de/foren/read.php?17,7950210

[Fat Controller]

Over on the German Drehscheibe forum, someone's just posted some pics of Boulogne hoverport as it is now, with sand dunes starting to take over.

http://www.drehscheibe-online.de/foren/read.php?17,7950210

There've been some other ones on one of the 'Urban Explorer' sites. Here's a link to a Google Earth view:-  https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Outreau,+France/@50.7144834,1.5725836,302m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x47dc2c8b7fba2987:0x16b3450670259e1!8m2!3d50.706513!4d1.59255?hl=en

The railway line used to continue to Outreau steel-works, which was on the other side of the docks to the main ferry terminal- the plant (now closed) used to specialise in point components and other items for the railway industry.

[PhilJ W]

Over on the German Drehscheibe forum, someone's just posted some pics of Boulogne hoverport as it is now, with sand dunes starting to take over.

http://www.drehscheibe-online.de/foren/read.php?17,7950210

I like his comments at the bottom, Germans do have a sense of humour.

[ColinK]

I went for a bike ride along Morecambe Prom a few days ago and the RNLI were doing donuts in their hovercraft.  It wasn’t a rescue but appeared to be ‘driver training’ or perhaps even a driving test as it was going between various markers.

 

[Hroth]

There's also an RNLI hovercraft at Hoylake on the Wirral, thanks to the sticky mud and drainage channels across the Dee estuary.

 

The worlds first commercial hovercraft service was deployed across the mouth of the Dee in July 1962, between Rhyl on the North Wales coast and Moreton on the Wirral, using a Vickers-Armstrong VA3 hovercraft.  Sadly not a successful venture...

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/wales/entries/ae3388b9-cd80-384a-bd63-04b16e6cad29

 

[Michael Hodgson]

50 minutes ago, Hroth said:

The worlds first commercial hovercraft service was deployed across the mouth of the Dee in July 1962, between Rhyl on the North Wales coast and Moreton on the Wirral, using a Vickers-Armstrong VA3 hovercraft.  Sadly not a successful venture...

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/wales/entries/ae3388b9-cd80-384a-bd63-04b16e6cad29

 

When we lived near Warrington Dad took us there intending to give us a trip on it - unfortunately it had some technical problem that day, so we never got our ride.

[rockershovel]

I once crossed to the Isle of Wight by hovercraft. Like riding in a Land Rover driven at speed over a succession of cattle grids, while someone hosed it down with a seawater fire hose. Awful. 

[Legend]

Yeah my Mum and Dad took me on trip  Southsea to Ryde in 1976 (the hot summer) . It was great but as you say was pretty bumpy  and noisy , especially for the residents of Ryde . I remember thinking Ryde was a charming place with Hover ramp adjoining the station and bus station , full of Southern Vectis buses . Pitch and Putt close by.  Happy days . 

 

I'd have loved to have seen an SRN4. The closest I got was an Airfix kit , much sought after these days . 

 

An interesting thread I've just come across . 

Edited July 22, 2021 by Legend
appalling spelling

[BernardTPM]

Photos by my Dad taken at Dover in the Summer of 1974 with a Seaspeed SRN4 in original short format. Unfortunately the name or reg. no. is not visible even at full resolution.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited March 31, 2022 by BernardTPM

[Andy Kirkham]

I remember seeing this at Weston-super-Mare in the summer of 1963. It shuttled between there and Penarth

 

This article has a link to a video.

http://www.barry-today.co.uk/article.cfm?id=121969&headline=When the hovercraft arrived at Penarth – 50 years ago – by Brian Keitch&sectionIs=news&searchyear=2018

Edited July 22, 2021 by Andy Kirkham

[Nearholmer]

Not sure if it’s been mentioned, but there was a service, mainly for joyriding I suspect, from Southsea Beach to the IoW (not Ryde I’m fairly certain) in the mid/late 1960s. I have a photo of a family outing on it, and my bros look of an age where it might be 1965/66-ish. As Rocker says, the ride was harsh, even across a millpond-calm Solent.

 

Edit: just found this, which tells all about it http://manorcourtupdate.blogspot.com/2010/08/web-page-no-860.html?m=1 Seems it did go to Ryde, so my memory was faulty. Ryde was all about paddle steamers and steam trains to me then, so maybe I disconnected this from that.

 

A decade or so later, I rode on the big ones from Bolougne to Dover a few times on the way back from gricing expeditions, on one occasion doing the trip from Paris by turbo-train, it was all very “white heat of technology”, but already a bit fraying at edges even at that stage. I thought the ‘saloon’ on the hovercraft was distinctly basic, like a very utilitarian ‘bus or ferry, whereas somehow I expected it to be a bit comfy.

 

Picture stolen from a French thread that seems to have had rather the same conversation last year.

 

 

Edited July 22, 2021 by Nearholmer

[JeremyC]

A former colleague of mine in the Merchant Navy, a deck officer, had worked on the cross channel SRN4s earlier in his career. He used to say his claim to fame there had been managing on one occasion to arrive on the slipway travelling sideways after getting his approach wrong in windy weather.

Edited July 22, 2021 by JeremyC

[eastglosmog]

When living in Hythe (Hampshire, not Kent) I remember being able to hear the Southampton - Cowes hovercraft SR-N6 belting down Southampton Water  from some way inland.  Nice film of it here:

 

[rockershovel]

I never travelled on the Cross Channel service, although No 2 Son once used it and wasn't impressed. Noisy and nothing to see, owing to the spray streaming down the windows. 

 

The Soviets experimented with hovercraft in the vast, shallow, ever-changing delta of the NE Caspian. Their conclusion was that while well suited to the conditions, they were unsuited to the task because their fuel consumption imposed tight limits on their effective range and a loaded hovercraft, once broken down or out of fuel, doesn't float well. 

 

The Kashagan oilfield project subsequently became enthusiastic buyers of those high-speed ferries that run from Southampton to IoW. A three-hour run in one of those, with a full passenger load, kit bags piled everywhere, Russian language gangster shoot-em-up blaring on the tv screens,  aircon on the fritz (if fitted at all) half the bottled water stolen during restocking and blocked toilets, into or across the prevailing choppy conditions around D Island wasn't the sort of thing you wanted to make a habit of. 

 

 

[Nearholmer]

I've seen videos showing some deeply scary-looking Russian military contraptions that seem to be able to act as hovercraft when needed, but I think become 'skimmers' on open water.

[rockershovel]

I see that ekranoplans are attracting interest again. The sole surviving Soviet unit has been towed to Dagestan for refurbishment as a tourist attraction (these things are HUGE, the fuselage is about the size of an A380) and a Singapore based company are looking at a small model for executive transport. There are also studies of an unmanned drone version.

 

I find all that rather scary. These things do 300mph, at single-figure altitudes. Isn't technology wonderful? 

[rockershovel]

11 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

I've seen videos showing some deeply scary-looking Russian military contraptions that seem to be able to act as hovercraft when needed, but I think become 'skimmers' on open water.

 

Ekranoplan, or "Caspian sea monsters". They fly at VERY low altitude, creating a ground-effect air buffer. They have more engines than you'd imagine and seaplane type hulls. In the best Soviet style, they had rockets on the back.. there were also little eight-seaters used as in-field staff transport, but nobody cared about those...