In the late 60s and early 70s, hovercraft ferries were the ships of the future. Hovercraft, flying on cushions of air, operated across the English Channel carrying passengers and cars at speeds of 40 to 60 knots. Some imagined that one-day hovercraft would cross the Atlantic at 100 miles per hour. That day never arrived. The hovercraft turned out to be too expensive, too inefficient and uncomfortable. The last cross-channel hovercraft ferries stopped operating in 2000, driven from the water by high fuel costs and the slower but more comfortable alternative provided by the Channel Tunnel.

The largest of the Channel hovercraft were the SR.N4, better known as the Mountbatten class.  The Mark 1 SR.N4 could carry 30 cars and 250 passengers.  Now, the last two Mountbatten class hovercraft, the Princess Margaret and Princess Anne are both in danger of being scrapped. The hovercraft are now being stored at the Hovercraft Museum at Lee-on-Solent, where museum volunteers have started a petition to save them. So far, more than 2,600 have signed the petition to save the old boats.

Hovercraft have not disappeared entirely, although their shortcomings remain.  In 2014, the Aleutians East Borough of Alaska retired their $9 million hovercraft due to high costs and because it could not operate in waves above 6 feet or winds above 30 miles per hour, which was about 30 percent of the time.

A commercial hovercraft still operates between Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight.  The Royal National Lifeboat Insititute (RNLI) also operates a class of hovercraft lifeboats developed to operate in tidal areas and mudflats. Militaries around the world also use hovercraft for landing and assault craft.

While the hovercraft has survived as a specialty craft, as the “ship of the future,” it has slipped into the past.

Hovercraft, Concorde, and the Dreams of the 1970s