It had been hoped Bluebird would reach sufficient speed to allow it to “plane” – the point at which hydrodynamics enable the machine to skim across the surface of the lake.
“Everybody is frustrated that we didn’t get long planing runs,” Carroll said on the slipway as Bluebird was towed back into the engineering tent for the final time.
“If it was that easy, everybody would be doing it.”
He said the team thought it had “cracked it” on Friday, but a pipe coming off on Sunday was time-consuming to fix “and then you lose the weather window”.
Campbell spent between November 1966 and January 1967 in Coniston trying to break the water speed record.
“As we said during the week, you feel how Donald must’ve with two months of it,” Carroll said.
“You empathise with what he must’ve gone through with everybody doubting his conviction.”