The fascinating history – and curious comeback – of the hovercraft

If you take a trip to the beach just west of Gosport on the second Saturday of August, there is a chance that you will notice something unusual in the shallows. It will be strangely familiar, but also something of a ghostly apparition, a form of transport which, at one point, seemed like a bright version of the future – only to quickly become obsolete.

Certainly, the summer of 2026 seems an odd time to be setting up a new hovercraft route. But this is exactly the headline that has floated up from the Hampshire coast: Hovertravel, the UK’s last remaining hovercraft operator, has launched a limited service between Lee-on-the-Solent and Ryde on the Isle of Wight. So limited, in fact, that the 15-minute journey has been given a schedule of just seven specific days. Having commenced on June 28, and continued on July 9 and 23, it will conclude its nostalgic dance across the water with services on August 7, 21 and 22, and September 5.

Made in Britain

Nostalgic? Indeed. While hovercrafts have been operating in UK waters for more than 60 years – Hovertravel has offered a connection between Southsea and Ryde, without interruption, since 1965 – the golden age of this curious amphibious vehicle has long since faded into the past. And yet it holds a cherished place in the heart of many travellers from these shores – not least because, as with so many inventions, it originated in Britain.

The concept of “hovering” probably dates to 1716 and the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg, a Swedish scientist, but the first serious attempts to bring the idea into reality were conducted in Chiswick. It was there, in a shipyard on the banks of the Thames, that John Thornycroft experimented with his blueprint for a cushioned ship which used an air-flow system to lift itself above the water. His earliest model dated to 1877 – rather too early, alas, for there to be suitable engines in existence to power it.

Dagobert Müller von Thomamühl, an Austrian naval officer, made greater progress with his rudimentary luftkissengleitboot (air-cushion boat), which he unveiled in 1915, but while it offered a speed of 32 knots (37mph) and could be armed with torpedoes, it was deemed of scant use in the largely land-based conflict of the First World War and was quietly abandoned.

Others joined the quest, including inventors in Finland and the USSR, and even engineers at the Ford plant in Detroit. But it would be an Englishman who cracked the code.

Generally viewed as the father of the hovercraft, Christopher Cockerell began his studies in 1953, drawing on Thornycroft’s research. He theorised that it was not enough simply to pump air under a boat. The trick, he suggested, was to channel air around the perimeter of the craft to create a “momentum curtain”: a wall of moving air that would raise it above the sea (or any surface) entirely, thus eliminating the problem of friction.

Cockerell’s forward steps were charmingly low-tech. At one point, he tested his calculations by using a hairdryer to force a stream of pressurised air between two tin cans – one of which, according to legend, had contained coffee, the other cat food. He produced various models (one of them, from 1955, is on display at the Science Museum). He put them through their paces in the none-more-English context of the village green in Somerleyton, the slice of rural Suffolk he called home.

Is it a bird? Is it a plane?

Initially, Cockerell had envisaged a military purpose for his hovercraft. But the blueprints were passed from department to department without generating interest. Cockerell would later joke that “the Navy said it was a plane not a boat, the RAF said it was a boat not a plane, and the Army was plain not interested”.

Finally, in 1958, he managed to persuade the National Research Development Corporation to fund a full-scale test model. It would be built with the assistance of Saunders-Roe, a marine engineering company based on the Isle of Wight. Hence this first hovercraft’s pragmatic registration number, SR.N1 (Saunders-Roe Nautical 1). It came with a 450-horsepower engine which drove a vertical fan in the middle of the craft. For the first time in almost a century of clever men trying to make boats “fly”, it had viability.

It set off on its maiden “voyage” on June 11, 1959, zooming out into the Solent off East Cowes. A fortnight later, on July 25, 1959, it hit the headlines by successfully crossing the English Channel, taking two hours and three minutes to travel from Dover to Calais.

If this was a very genteel speed compared with what would come later, it was fast enough to attract royal attention. On December 18, 1959, Prince Philip visited the Saunders-Roe plant, and talked the hovercraft’s test pilot, Cdr Peter Lamb, into letting him take the controls. He would drive the vessel at such speed that, although he was asked to slow down, he pushed it beyond its capabilities and dashed the bow. The damage would be left unrepaired. It was referred to, forever after, as “the royal dent”.

The Mark 5 version of the SR.N1 appeared in 1961, wearing the distinctive rubber skirting that would become intrinsic to all hovercraft models. By 1962, multiple companies were producing their own, but none were quite as impressive as the SR.N4. Introduced in 1968, it was equipped with four Rolls-Royce turboshaft engines and could reach speeds of 83 knots (96mph). In its first iteration, it was 131ft (40m) long – able to carry 254 passengers and up to 30 cars.

A duel in the Channel

With this, the era of cross-Channel hovercraft travel began in earnest. British tourists who bounced across the waves in this halcyon period may recall that two companies were the workhorses of the route.

Founded in 1965 as Cross-Channel Hover Services Ltd, Hoverlloyd changed its name in 1966, just in time to begin services between Ramsgate and Calais. It became a recognisable fixture, distinctive in its red-and-white livery. Initially, the company used the smaller SR.N6 before switching to the SR.N4 in 1969.

To accommodate these giants, it built its own hoverport, two miles west of Ramsgate in the village of Cliffsend, across a pretty parcel of coastal land, beloved of bird-watchers. It met with significant local opposition, and two official inquiries were required before permission was formally granted. The opening ceremony – held on May 2, 1969 – was conducted by Prince Philip.

The second mainstay of the era brightened the colour scheme by “sailing” in red, white and blue. Another 1965 debutante, Seaspeed was jointly owned by British Rail and its French equivalent SNCF. It too began life using the SR.N6, initially devoting itself, as of July 6, 1966, to the short hop between Southampton and Cowes. Two years later, it embraced the SR.N4, and began offering a longer crossing between Dover and Boulogne, before adding a second route, between the Kent port and Calais, in the summer of 1970.

By 1974, 1.5 million passengers a year took this fast route to the Continent, as the hovercraft captured 30 per cent of the cross-Channel market. Equally, these figures were insufficient to sustain two rival operators. Hoverlloyd and Seaspeed merged on October 25, 1981 to create a new company, Hoverspeed.

The marriage was fruitful, and Hoverspeed zipped across the Channel for two decades – until time caught up with it. By the end of the millennium, what had seemed futuristic in 1965 looked distinctly passé. It was not that the hovercraft had ceased to be quick, but the wind had been sucked from its metaphorical sails by the opening of the Channel tunnel (in May 1994), the rapid expansion of the budget-airline network and the boom in cheap European package holidays which this entailed.

The death knell was sounded in July 1999 when the EU removed tariffs between member states, and even the “booze cruise” to France lost its relevance. Hoverspeed pulled its services on October 1, 2000.

Relics and remnants

For the past 26 years, Hovertravel has been the UK’s lone hovercraft operator, and has ploughed a singular furrow between Southsea and Ryde until the introduction of its separate service from Lee-on-the-Solent last month.

Whether or not this equates to a fresh future for Cockerell’s great invention, it will always have a past. Those with a taste for melancholy tourism might seek out Hoverlloyd’s derelict Ramsgate Hoverport, which has found occasional (but only ever temporary) use as a car park and a go-karting track since finally being put out to pasture in 1987.

Those keen to find a brighter perspective might note that Hovertravel’s departures from Lee-on-the-Solent set off from the slipway outside the town’s Hovercraft Museum. Exhibits here include the Princess Anne, a doughty SR.N4 which criss-crossed the Channel for Hoverspeed until the end – as well as a range of John Thornycroft’s models. That original SR.N1, meanwhile, is on display at the Science and Innovation Park near Swindon.

[Source: Daily Telegraph]