Hovercrafts!

November 8, 2023 10:30 AM

Hovercrafts! A short excerpt on their history from a longer documentary. They can rescue people and dogs. There's a museum. You can buy a hovercraft or build one. How about the science? Ride one from Portsmouth to Ryde (more and a documentary). The US Navy uses them as landing craft.

• Blown away: How the hovercraft tells the story of British decline
• A 1962 British Documentary: Look at Life 37: So they All Hover Now
• Will there ever be hovercars?
Have Paramount+?:
• Inside Mighty Machines - Hovercraft (with the sad scrapping of what used to be the world's largest hovercraft, the SR.N4)
• Hover Racers: Flying on Air

posted by ShooBoo (33 comments total)

In an old job, I used to oversee hiring. Every year we’d get scores of résumés for six or eight seasonal jobs, and even 25 years ago, you could tell that almost everyone was reading the same three or four sources for How To Make Your Résumé Stand Out, so there were dozens of people telling me how they were highly skilled at producing deliverables in a fast-paced environment and such.

I took to calling people for interviews who had intriguing anomalies in their CVs: one guy I interviewed and subsequently hired because he had mentioned in his résumé he was a licensed hovercraft pilot.

Other notable interviewees included a woman who noted her proficiencies included figure skating and kung fu (tragically, not at the same time, which I think really overlooks the potential of those blades) and the guy who had planted basically a million trees.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 10:43 AM on November 8, 2023 [5 favorites]

I have nothing but respect for the fellow selling build-your-own hovercraft plans for $50 and technical support for $70/hr. That is just brilliant.
posted by phooky at 10:49 AM on November 8, 2023 [8 favorites]

the sad scrapping of what used to be the world's largest hovercraft

My hovercraft is full of feels.
posted by zamboni at 11:00 AM on November 8, 2023 [26 favorites]

It was inevitable, but I didn't expect it so soon.
posted by Greg_Ace at 11:16 AM on November 8, 2023 [4 favorites]

It was inevitable, but I didn't expect it so soon.

Nobody expects...
posted by Faint of Butt at 11:27 AM on November 8, 2023 [6 favorites]

I spent the summer of 1994 at a math-enrichment program at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. There wasn't a lot to do in Terre Haute, but the program's directors tried to make sure there were interesting excursions from time to time. I remember that one weekend we visited a hovercraft manufacturer. Our guide, who might well have been the owner of the place, was kind of intense on the virtues of hovercrafts as a mode of transportation. And that's what hovercrafts always remind me of, that visit to someone who was either convinced hovercrafts were the way of the future or who was remaining resolutely optimistic in circumstances where optimism was perhaps not realistic.

On search: maybe I was wrong about misguided optimism and my presumption of their eventual doom. It looks like these guys are still going strong, and I doubt there are multiple groups who could be easily characterized as "the Terre Haute hovercraft people".
posted by jackbishop at 11:39 AM on November 8, 2023 [4 favorites]

I really want a hovercraft! Not only can you build one out of a vacuum cleaner, they can also mow your grass!
posted by TedW at 12:05 PM on November 8, 2023 [1 favorite]

As a small child I saw a hovercraft come up out of the water over a dock from the Wannsee in Berlin. It still registers as one of the loudest sounds I've ever heard, and I was a professional blow-it-up person for a few years.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 12:07 PM on November 8, 2023 [2 favorites]

We lived in Portsmouth, Old Hampshire in 1961, 1962. I remember going down to the beach at Southsea to see a ?SR.N1? scooting down the shingle and out to sea with a lot of noise and spray. 15 years later, we loaded a small Citroën and four people into a Hoverlloyd SR.N4 [capacity 250 passengers and 30 cars] from Ramsgate to Calais. It was 2x quicker than the ferry but also really loud, bumpy and claustrophobic; so we returned a few weeks later by conventional ferry . . . with added sea views & fresh air option.
posted by BobTheScientist at 12:18 PM on November 8, 2023

I was on one of the many commercial hovercraft that crossed the English Channel in 1977. It felt like an airplane inside. Pretty cool!

But because it was an English craft, it's plural would have had no "s". Just "hovercraft". As in "my hovercraft are full of ..."
posted by mdoar at 12:19 PM on November 8, 2023 [3 favorites]

There was one year where I was begging Santa for a Typhoon RC hovercraft because the toy commercials made it look so awesome.

I learned pretty quickly on Christmas morning that:

a) The batteries only gave you 10-15 minutes of runtime tops and then you had to charge it again for 5 hours
b) You had to constantly hold down a button to keep the skirt inflated. The second you let go, it would stop.
c) It only really worked on smooth, carpet-less floors of which we only had in a cramped kitchen.

I always wanted to take it outside and use it on a nearby pond, but my parents wouldn't let me because they were certain I'd lose it to the depths.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 12:50 PM on November 8, 2023 [2 favorites]

I wonder to what extent GI Joe made the hovercraft seem so immensely cool that young boys all over America just sort of expected them to be a normal part of the modern world. Then, we grew up, and there just weren’t hovercraft everywhere? Harsh lessons of the real world vs. the expectations kids develop from watching cartoons.
posted by Ghidorah at 1:06 PM on November 8, 2023 [2 favorites]

I'm delighted to learn Oita in southern Japan has just bought three Hovercraft to connect the city to its airport which is otherwise a long drive away and had a hovercraft link in the past.

They're the same type that run the Isle of Wight service, which is currently the only scheduled passenger hovercraft in the world.
posted by grahamparks at 1:08 PM on November 8, 2023

Not quite to the same scale as the hovercraft described in the FPP, Decoder Ring (one of my favorite podcasts; definitely check it out!) did a great recent episode about the personal hovercraft ad in the back of BoysLife magazine that was seared into the memory of just about every Cub Scout and Boy Scout in the US starting in the mid-to-late 1970s.
posted by msbrauer at 1:16 PM on November 8, 2023 [2 favorites]

Key player Saunders-Roe had a particular flair for projects that sometimes seemed good if looked at quickly, but represented the finest of dead-end technologies, or were absurdly grandiose paper projects. Hovercraft were in the former class as was their proposed Black Prince satellite launcher, and a hydrofoil warship for the Canadian Navy.

In the latter were a flying boat jetliner with five decks carrying 1000(!) passengers and a nuclear-powered oil tanker submarine.

Needless to say, they're my favorite defunct British aerospace company.
posted by Quindar Beep at 2:05 PM on November 8, 2023 [3 favorites]

A discussion like this is sure to dredge up memories of the flying saucers of Disneyland. Alas, they were gone by the time of my first visit, but I did get to ride a real hovercraft-ferry across the English Channel in 1977. Mostly I remember the pilot's announcement that we "were cruising at an altitude of six inches."
posted by Rash at 2:28 PM on November 8, 2023 [2 favorites]

I don't know much about hovercraft but I was amused to discover several years ago that NZ police have powers to enter and search "any building, aircraft, ship, hovercraft, carriage, vehicle, premises, or place" under certain conditions as given by the Misuse of Drugs Act 1975.

Since then I have always imaged some criminal in 1974 smuggling tons of drugs by hovercraft while the police looked on, powerless to intervene until they could get the law changed.
posted by AndrewStephens at 3:29 PM on November 8, 2023 [4 favorites]

But because it was an English craft, it's plural would have had no "s". Just "hovercraft". As in "my hovercraft are full of ..."

Not "hovers-craft"? I am disappointed.
posted by Dip Flash at 3:31 PM on November 8, 2023 [1 favorite]

"any building, aircraft, ship, hovercraft, carriage, vehicle, premises, or place"

Similarly, the requirement for a license to sell alcohol in England and Wales does not apply "aboard an aircraft, hovercraft or railway vehicle engaged on a journey", which Tom Scott and friends took as a challenge.
posted by grahamparks at 3:39 PM on November 8, 2023 [3 favorites]

I really want a hovercraft! Not only can you build one out of a vacuum cleaner, they can also mow your grass!

Not only can they mow your grass, they can vacuum your floor (and they work pretty well on hard surfaces, might get another one and have hovervacuum bumpercars. My cats would probably not approve)
posted by foonly at 4:19 PM on November 8, 2023 [1 favorite]

Took the hovercraft from Dover to France or maybe Belgium in the past - god it was loud! we really needed ear protection.

A school mate lost his toes using a fly-mo on wet grass on a hillside, slipped, his feet flew out from under him ....
posted by mbo at 5:57 PM on November 8, 2023 [2 favorites]

I was housesitting once and they had a hover-lawnmower that I had to use. I remember it as terrible; it needed about 20% more power than it had because it couldn't quite maintain its altitude.
posted by Dip Flash at 7:49 PM on November 8, 2023

But because it was an English craft, it's plural would have had no "s". Just "hovercraft".

Isn't that the case everywhere? "Hovercrafts" gives me the heebie-jeebies, same as if someone claimed they had flown lots of aircrafts while learning spycrafts, even if the training was mostly taking pictures of sheeps.

The plural of hovercraft is hovercraft.
posted by Dysk at 12:47 AM on November 9, 2023

I have loved hovercraft since seeing one of the big SR.N4s leaving Folkestone (UK) as a child. Finally got to ride on the Portsmouth to Ryde hovercraft a few years ago. When I arrived in Ryde I discovered it was possible at low tide to get down onto the beach and walk round onto the concrete apron where the hovercraft arrived. I discovered two things when the next hovercraft came in:
1. the wash that follows means your feet will get wet unless you move fast.
2. once it's gone past where you're standing you will find yourself right behind the propellers... they blow a lot of sand, spray and bits of seaweed around.
I do have some awesome ground-level photos of it arriving though... was worth it.
You also have to take shots with a relatively slow shutter speed otherwise the prop blades freeze and it looks really weird.
posted by IncognitoErgoSum at 3:59 AM on November 9, 2023

I used to regularly cross the Channel by hovercraft in the late 80s and early 90s. It was always impressive watching it come flying across the water and then up onto the apron, but it was so loud. The whole thing smacked of the 1970s, from the tartan-heavy design to the whole sense of a future that had fallen behind. It was never, ever more than 1/4 full.

On one of the last crossings I made the hovercraft engine broke down, and it took about 15 minutes for the pilots to get it going again. That is how I know that a hovercraft will float (so it did not become full of eels, or any other fish) but it does so really low in the water. If you are a passenger in your seat you look out and the waves are at shoulder level. And then you remember you're drifting, very low in the water in poor visibility in the middle of one of the world's busiest shipping lanes.

I miss hovercraft, and I also miss the sort of future they offered when I was a child. A standard item on every kid's TV programme and magazine was about future transportation, and hovercraft were always there with monorails, mag-lev trains, and jet packs (or maybe single seater gyrocopters). My dad's car always seemed so dull in comparison.
posted by YoungStencil at 4:19 AM on November 9, 2023 [4 favorites]

I remember crossing the channel on a hovercraft in the late 80s. Young me thought it was way more fun than the slow, boring ferries we usually used but I think my parents found it too loud and unpleasant, or possibly expensive, so we only did it once.

Amazing to discover from that New European article that the first public passenger hovercraft service in the world ran from Rhyl to Wallasey, for some unfathomable reason. Anyone who's been to either of those places will be completely astounded to hear that it wasn't a success, I'm sure.
posted by tomsk at 5:00 AM on November 9, 2023

the sad scrapping of what used to be the world's largest hovercraft

My hovercraft is full of feels.

I understand somewhat unusually, its final trip it was used to transport young calves destined for the slaughterhouse.

You can likely tell where this is going. I’ll show myself out.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 5:21 AM on November 9, 2023

I really want a hovercraft! Not only can you build one out of a vacuum cleaner,

I made one as a science project, so I guess I can include myself as a hovercraft pilot! It needed at least two vacuum cleaner motors, maybe four. And only actually worked on my parents very smooth garage floor. And did not have actual forward propulsion, but I could sit on it and have my friend give a push and slide across the floor.
posted by sammyo at 8:12 AM on November 9, 2023

The plural of hovercraft is hovercraft.

The plural of hovercraft is bumper-cars!
posted by Greg_Ace at 11:30 AM on November 9, 2023

The plural of hovercraft is bumper-cars!

You're probably just talking about how multiple hovercraft would behave, but my understanding is that most dodgems* just run on wheels, although there are weird exceptions like The Mouse's Flying Saucers/Luigi's Flying Tires, which were essentially upsized air hockey tables.

* I used to think that the vocabulary distinction between bumper cars and dodgem cars revealed something distinct about the American Character, but it turns out that it's mostly just regional, based on the prime mover, the Dodgem Car Company.
posted by zamboni at 12:02 PM on November 9, 2023

You're probably just talking about how multiple hovercraft would behave

...in the hands of Top Gear presenters, yes.
posted by Greg_Ace at 12:07 PM on November 9, 2023

In the "Inside Mighty Machines" video listed at the top, it was said that at the end of the cross-Channel hovercraft trips, they were making almost all their money on the sale of duty-free alcohol.
posted by ShooBoo at 12:12 PM on November 9, 2023

Thanks for the post. I use the Southsea-Ryde hovercraft now and then - it always feels like a weirdly fantastical 1950s thing somehow. Really must do the museum.
posted by paduasoy at 2:59 PM on November 9, 2023