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Rare photographs of luxury yacht built for daredevil Campbell to be auctioned
RARE photographs of a luxury yacht built in Yorkshire for daredevil racing enthusiast Sir Malcolm Campbell will go under the hammer on Saturday.
The pictures show Bluebird IV, a 175-tonne ocean-going yacht built by the Goole Shipbuilding Company in the 1930s.
It was ordered by Campbell as he sought a fresh challenge, having broken a series of world speed records on land and water over the previous decade.
Campbell was intending to take Bluebird IV in search of a large hoard of Peruvian treasure said to have been buried on Cocos Island off Costa Rica.
He was thwarted, however, by the outbreak of the Second World War a year after taking delivery of the yacht, which nonetheless had an eventful career at sea.
Bluebird IV was requisitioned during the war and took part in the evacuation from Dunkirk before serving as a patrol vessel in the Irish Sea.
Campbell died in 1948 and his yacht passed through the hands of various owners, including the French car maker Jean Louis Renault. She is still afloat and is said to be in wonderful condition after a major restoration and refit in 2007.
Despite his achievements, Campbell was arguably eclipsed by his son Donald, who broke eight world speed records in the 1950s and 60s and remains the only person to set both world land and water speed records in the same year, 1964.
Donald Campbell was killed during an attempt on the water speed record in Bluebird K7, which crashed on Coniston Water in the Lake District at a speed in excess of 300 mph on January 4, 1967.
The photographs of Bluebird IV were found in a wardrobe at a house in Lincoln, where they have lain for more than 70 years.
They are expected to make several hundred pounds at Brown's Autumn Fine Art and Antiques Auction in Brigg, North Lincolnshire.
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