Bluebird: Coniston's Ruskin Museum raises cash for court battle

For years Bluebird lay on the bottom of Coniston after it crashed in 1967

Thousands of pounds has been raised to support a legal challenge over the ownership of Donald Campbell's Bluebird.

Coniston's Ruskin Museum said it had started court proceedings against Bill Smith, who has been restoring the craft on Tyneside.

Mr Smith, of the Bluebird Project, argues there was an agreement to maintain and occasionally sail it.

Museum bosses deny this and say they are missing their "jewel in the crown".

• Bluebird: 'Lock it away and interest will wane'

Tracy Hodgson, Ruskin Museum director, said the record-breaking Bluebird had been "gifted" to the people of Coniston and should be returned.

"The Campbell family really want Bluebird K7 to come back to Coniston", family friend Phil Johnston said.

"There is the phrase that the boat stays with the skipper, which Donald said many years ago, and he is buried here in our churchyard".

Campbell family friend Phil Johnston said Bluebird is "not a toy"

He said, although it would be "nice to run it on Coniston", those involved have to "remember that an old lady like this is not a toy".

"It's heritage and a historic artefact. It needs looking after and preserving in the right way."

Mr Smith recovered Bluebird's wreckage in 2001 and was later asked to restore it

Mr Smith, of North Shields, argues he was told his team could maintain and run Bluebird a few months each year, as part of an agreement to repair the boat.

The rebuilt craft returned to water for trials on Lock Fad on the Isle of Bute in 2018, but remains at Mr Smith's workshop in North Tyneside.

He said: "What we don't want to happen is we get it all installed, and we come to get it whenever to take it out on the water and find the doors are shut.

"People have made it their lives' work, we're yet to meet any fair-minded reasonable individual who thinks getting kicked out [with] nothing is a fair and equitable outcome."

A court date is yet to be fixed, the museum said.