Why the hovercraft's time might have finally arrived (2024)

The 12.30pm midweek hovercraft departure from Portsmouth is already respectably half-full when we step on board. Marketed as the world's only year-round scheduled passenger hovercraft service, the Union Jack-emblazoned machine flies for a thrilling 10 minutes, hovering just inches above the water’s surface. It is the fastest way to reach Ryde on the Isle of Wight, a Detroit-sized island off the south coast of England. A rival vehicle, the FastCat ferry, takes more than twice as long, around 22 minutes.

The hovercraft's engines roar (no louder than an airliner on take-off) as its beefy cushion inflates, lifting the vehicle gently five feet (1.6m) into the air. Then, it turns and slides seamlessly into the sea on its dash to Ryde. The 78-seater craft's unique ability to fly over sand and mud without damaging the fragile ecosystems underneath means that passengers may board even at low tide.

Hovertravel, which runs this service, is the sister company of Griffon Hoverwork, a British manufacturer that traces its roots back to Sir Christopher co*ckerell's invention of the hovercraft in the 1950s.

This mode of transport may be more than 70 years old but it could be about to enjoy a second wind. The global rise in sea levels, and the blurring of the boundary between land and sea that will result, is set to grow its niche further.

"It makes you feel very free," says Griffon's chief pilot Ben Avery. "You can climb straight out of the sea onto the sand, and it's one of the few machines that doesn't have anything in the way of automatic control, so you drive it by the seat of your pants. It's all done by feel and reaction.

Griffon Hoverwork has made new hovercraft for the Japanese city of Oita which will ferry passengers to its airport (Credit: Griffon Hoverwork)

"The older models, you have got to grab by the scruff of the neck and drive because they have mechanical controls."

Hovertravel likes to bill this as a unique service but in October 2024, a second year-round scheduled passenger hovercraft service will launch in Japan.

"There are more passenger hovercraft services around the world than people realise," says Avery. "There's quite a lot of passenger services that operate between China and Russia. We've got a customer out in Canada, who operates a year-round service. It's also not scheduled, but it is year-round."

Fifty-sixty years ago, the hovercraft was the future of transportation. We were promised hoverscooters, hovercars, hovertrains and hoverships. The Ford Motor Car Company unveiled the Ford Mach I hovercar concept and Popular Science, a US magazine, heralded a future of "Cars Without Wheels". But when a massive and popular hovercraft that transported people and their cars between England and France retired in 2000, many felt the final curtain had fallen on a technology that hadn't really delivered on all the hype. With the humble hover mower the only mainstream bit of hovercraft technology in existence, it seemed to have become just another dead-end technology.

"Hovercraft were noisy as hell and expensive to operate but there were some advantages to the technology," says John Geoghegan, author of White Elephant Technology, a book about failed technologies. "They were fast and could operate on land and sea. They were also as cool as heck."

Just down the coast from Portsmouth lies The Hovercraft Museum, overlooked by giant propellers that rise above a new housing estate nearby like an executioner's axe. Adjacent is the massive concrete ramp or apron that runs down to the Solent from the hangars of the old Royal Naval Air Service Lee-on-Solent base.

Inside the gates of "the world's only hovercraft museum" I find a cornucopia of hovercraft, large and small, military and civilian, in various stages of restoration, as well as two machines from the James Bond movie Die Another Day.

By the 1960s, there were British hovercraft large enough to carry cars across the English Channel (Credit: Hovercraft Museum Archive)

The blue and white Princess Anne is a hefty beast. Nearly as long as a Boeing 747's wingspan and as wide as two large sea containers, it is the only surviving example of the SRN.4 (Saunders-Roe Nautical 4), the largest commercial hovercraft ever built. Its air-screw propellers, powered by Rolls-Royce turboprop engines, are the largest in the world at a massive 21ft (6.3m) in diameter.

But all the excitement seemed to fizzle out in the year 2000.

"They were only ever designed to last 10 to 20 years but they ended up lasting 30," says Alex Walker of The Hovercraft Museum. "The SRN.4s were using aircraft engines. There was asbestos. The electrical systems. Compliance with the regulations – or mitigation – was getting more and more onerous and then there was the abolition of duty free [tax breaks for travellers].

"By then, [hovercraft] were also competing with the Channel Tunnel, and new ferries, which were easier to use and operate. So, there was no one thing they could do to fix the problem."

In nearby Trafalgar Wharf, Portchester, a huge metal hangar-like structure known as the Hovercraft Shed because of the machines built there in the past, is the home of Griffon Hoverwork. The company has delivered around 200 hovercrafts in the last 50 years to 41 countries including Canada, New Zealand, Colombia and Japan. The majority of these vehicles have been ordered by militaries. The first thing I see when I step into the shed's cavernous interior is a large, brand new hovercraft surrounded by scaffolding and engineers busy prepping it for its next sea trial.

The machine is the last of an order worth more than $32m (£25m) for three hovercrafts to link the city of Oita in northern Japan to its airport across the bay. It is like a stretched version of the HoverTravel craft. Close to half the length of The Princess Anne, it's Griffon's latest example of a new generation of quieter, more fuel-efficient hovercrafts under construction. It uses lightweight materials and two industrial diesel engines to make it competitive with rival high-speed craft such as catamarans.

In this case, it is to deliver passengers straight to the doors of the airport terminal across the Oita Bay without the need for a quay or even a connecting bus.

Opposite is the jig for the next hovercraft to be built. This will be the first of two smaller machines for the Polish border guard, a repeat customer.

"Everybody seems to think that hovercraft died when the cross-Channel service stopped, but they didn't," says Ben Avery. "The problem was that hovercraft were quite badly mis-sold in the early days, and we still suffer from that legacy today. So we have worked very, very hard to bring the third generation of craft along that aren't the gas guzzlers they used to be, and nor do they leave your ears bleeding."

Small hovercraft can be used to rescue people in difficult environments such as frozen ponds (Credit: Neotrich)

Griffon isn't the only company in the world building hovercraft. The Textron shipyard in New Orleans in the US is busy constructing an initial order of 24 (expected to grow to 73) next-generation Ship-to-Shore Connector (SSC) craft for the US Navy and Marine Corps. The vessels have the ability to land on 80% of the world's shorelines and will have an expected service life of 30 years.

They are designed to replace a fleet of 91 vessels evolved from an earlier American design from the 1960s. That hovercraft, the Hydroskimmer, was the largest air-cushion vehicle ever built in the United States.

Russian and Chinese companies continue to build hovercraft largely for their own markets. The heavily armed Russian Zubr class of air-cushioned landing craft is currently holds the title of largest hovercraft in the world.

The Iranians have also been busy building their own, which may be based on British hovercraft designs sold to Iran before the 1978 revolution.

Then there are the manufacturers of small or light hovercraft. They often employ one or two people, and don't tend to stay around for long, but some of these start-ups have grown into established businesses.

Since 1976, the Indiana-based Neoteric Hovercraft has produced more than 1,000 different hovercrafts of 20 different designs. They are intended for personal use, such as racing, as well as tasks such as search and rescue, environmental studies and – equipped with magnetometers – detecting unexploded ordnance, as well as military training. The company's unique selling point is that it manufactures "the only light hovercraft with the ability to brake and reverse".

Hovercraft racing is a niche pursuit; the first event took place in Australia in 1964 (Credit: Guy Roberts)

The concept of the hovercraft is older than you might think. Hundreds of years ago, boat builders realised that ships could travel much faster if they were able to lift their hull, or part of it, out of the water. The firstmention of an air cushion vehicle was in 1716. In the 1870s, British shipbuilder John Thornycroft came up with the idea of injecting air underneath his boats to reduce the amount of friction. He was able to prove that his air-lubricated hulls were effective with small models, but the technology wasn't developed sufficiently to work on full-size vessels.

In the 1930s, Soviet engineer Vladimir Levkov assembled about 20 experimental "air-cushion boats" that he envisaged as fast attack or torpedo boats, including the long, shark-like L-5, which achieved an impressive 81mph (130km/h) in sea trials.

In the early 1950s, British engineer Christopher co*ckerell decided to channel the air into a narrow jet around the edge of the craft's perimeter, forming a curtain of moving air that would limit leakage. By 1955, he had built a working model of his "hovercraft" from balsa wood. He came up with the name, which was later trademarked, meaning that there are certain sensitivities around its use today.

Four years after his invention, with the support of the government-backed National Research Development Corporation, co*ckerell built the SRN.1, which resembled a flying saucer with a huge air intake in the middle. On 25 July 1959, the 50th anniversary of the first aeroplane flight over the Channel, he crossed the same body of water – albeit at a much lower altitude. The SRN.1 struggled to overcome waves, so his solution was a rubber skirt around the rim of the craft to boost its height.

Only 10 years later, much larger hovercrafts were in service, ferrying cars across the Channel.

The British inventor wasn't alone in seeing the potential of air-cushion vehicles. American engineers also realised their usefulness, but the craft they designed, built, and sold were largely overshadowed by rival British models.

Hovercraft were seen as a technology of the future, but early designs were loud anbd expensive to operate (Credit: Hovercraft Museum Archive)

"I was sitting at home watching television when I was quite young in 1959, and I saw the SRN.1 crossing the Channel – and that's what got me interested in hovercraft," says Chris Fitzgerald, president of Neoteric Hovercraft. "But there were many other people finding similar solutions to the same problem. There were people playing with this concept for a long time."

The era of the eccentric hovercraft inventor isn't over yet. The first hovercraft race was in Canberra, Australia in 1964 but racing – and cruising – hovercrafts continues to be popular. Competitors are often innovators who work on their vehicles in their garden sheds and garages.

"Racing is how my parents met – and I've been going since I was born," says Hannah Deacon, marketing director of the Hovercraft Club of Great Britain (HCGB), and runner-up in the 2022 Formula 50 World Hovercraft Championship in Sweden. "At races you don't talk about what you do outside of racing. You just focus on fixing the craft, making it better, making it go faster, getting back out there and trying it out.

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"We are worried about the carbon emissions from racing," adds Deacon. "So it's great to see that electric hovercraft are now being developed. But this kind of innovation is horribly expensive for individuals."

The future of the hovercraft is clear. It is unlikely there will ever be another huge machine like The Princess Anne. "But climate change is happening and we're getting more intertidal zones," says Avery. "So there will be more rescue craft, more survey vessels; and more craft will be needed that have this amphibious ability. We have built one hybrid craft already, and we will see hovercrafts that are fully electric and even hydrogen powered.

"The niche hovercraft operate in is only going to grow."

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