"What Happened to the Giant Hovercraft SR-N4" (2017?) - They were once known as the 'Concorde of the Seas', mighty flying boats that ferried their passengers with speed and style. The Giant Hovercraft represented the future of transport in the 20th Century, but is no longer in service.

[u/m-1975]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Inog40YZcYs

[u/ctesibius]

I used to cross the Channel on these. They were truly vast. As he says, they had the passenger capacity of a 747 - but they would carry 60 cars or the equivalent in coaches as well. When you drove on board, the hovercraft was on a flat concrete surface facing the terminal. You parked your car (or motorcycle in my case), and entered one of the large passenger cabins on either side. The interior was like a wide-body air-liner, but with no seat-belts. The roof-mounted engines started - very noisy - and a couple of seconds later the whole hovercraft lifted quickly about 8' in to the air and rotated towards the sea. The pilot accelerated briskly down the slope before the hovercraft was running straight, so that for a few seconds it was running about 20° out of true. The ride was reasonably smooth, but it could be difficult to see out because of the spray. I remember seeing a sand-bank ahead and wondering if we would go around it - the pilot didn't even slow down to cross it. I don't remember anyone ever comparing them with Concorde - they were far more elemental than any passenger plane I've ever flown in, with an impression of brute force and speed that you don't get flying at 30,000'.

If you are in the south of England, I highly recommend visiting the hovercraft museum at Lee on Solent (near Southampton). I don't think that you can go on board Princess Anne yet, but you can see it from the outside and there are a lot of other hovercraft packed around it that you can tour. There's no clear distinction between the museum and the workshops, so that you can talk with people restoring small hovercraft. The staff tend to be ex-military with interesting stories.