CLUB HERITAGE
CLUB CURIOSITY Club Librarian Trevor Dunmore unearths a treasure from the Club’s archive. In this issue, it is a very special pressure gauge.
Tucked away in Pall Mall is a pressure gauge, an evocative memento of Bluebird’s great endeavour in 1964.
ENGRAVED ON MY EARLY childhood memory is an illustrative wall-chart of record-breaking achievements across land, sea and air. It included the new world land speed record of 403.1 mph, set by Donald Campbell in Bluebird, at Lake Eyre on 17 July 1964. This particular feat was unique in many ways. Bluebird was the last record-breaking wheel-driven car that this country produced. Although it took place a full 17 years after John Cobb’s record run of 394.2 mph in 1947, 104 PELL - MELL & WOODCOTE
it added fewer than 10 mph to Cobb’s record. Nevertheless, it was widely recognised, both at the time and since, that Bluebird’s revolutionary design made it capable of a much higher speed in better conditions: it was decades ahead in its sophistication. With its Proteus 425 engine, 450 to 500 mph should have been well within its grasp had not Campbell’s tragic death in 1967 precluded another attempt. Tucked away in the Segrave Room, fittingly enough, in Pall Mall is an evocative memento of that great endeavour in 1964: the pressure gauge from Bluebird, stripped from the car’s aircraft-styled cockpit and now residing in a handsome mahogany case. Made by Smiths Instruments Ltd – the company which was responsible for the design, development and supply of all instrument systems on Bluebird – it was presented to the Club by Campbell himself. Apart from one or two references to its location around the clubhouse in the following decades and the addition of an identifying plaque in 1985, the Club has no further information about its provenance. That’s a pity. One question that comes to mind would be why that piece of instrumentation, from a wide panoply available, was chosen as a fitting donation.
