THE memory of Donald Campbell is to live on in East Lancashire with the construction of the new Bluebird'.

Pendle engineer John Getty is at the heart of the new bid and in bringing the project to Lancashire, he is maintaining the county's links with the world water speed record.

The Bluebird in which Donald Campbell died in 1967 was built at Samlesbury Engineering.

PDS engineering, a hi-tech firm based in Cliffe Street, Nelson, which has already worked on the land-speed record-breaking car Thrust SSC, will be part of the team working to get the famous craft restored and on display within two years.

Technical director Chris Woodcock said the chassis of the Bluebird K7 would be sent to the firm within the next few weeks, and specialists at PDS will be putting the damaged but relatively well-preserved frame back together.

The wrecked boat was salvaged from the bottom of Coniston Water, in the Lake District, in 2001, 34 years after it flipped over, crashed and disintegrated at more than 300mph.

Yesterday, Donald Campbell's daughter Gina announced that, after two failed bids for Heritage Lottery Fund cash, she was planning to go it alone to raise the £750,000 needed to fully restore it and place it in a special exhibition room at the Ruskin Museum, Coniston.

Bluebird K7 is currently housed in a South Shields workshop, at the home of Bill Smith, the amateur diver and underwater surveyor who discovered it.

Its jet engines were badly damaged during its time underwater, but its frame remains intact and relatively well-preserved, and Mr Smith is personally funding some of the project's cost.

He said: "We want grandparents to bring their grandchildren to see the boat on the water.

"We want to see the Bluebird live and breathe again."

Campbell had already broken seven water-speed records in Bluebird K7, and had beaten his record again on January 4 1967, with his first run averaging 297.6mph.

But instead of waiting and refuelling he set off again to try to make his target of a 300mph average.

The boat destabilised at 320mph, somersaulted out of the water and disintegrated on impact with the lake.

Campbell was killed instantly, and his remains were found in the lake two months after his craft was recovered.

Gina Campbell told a press conference at the museum: "We used to be a nation geared towards winning things but now we seem to have an apathy on winning.

"But my father was a winner who went out in a blaze as a hero.

"It would have been the way he would have chosen to go."