Britain is an island surrounded by a cold and unforgiving sea.
For centuries it protected us from attack.
But to prosper and thrive, we would need to do more
than just hide behind her saltwater shield.
Britain needed brave men, willing to venture out into the unknown
and she needed good boats to take them there.
I've spent my life at sea.
Now I'm going to take passage on six boats that together tell the story of modern Britain.
Built for exploration, war, fishing,
industry and our very survival -
these are the boats that built Britain
and changed the way we live for ever.
And this time I'm going to be aboard an LCVP landing craft,
the vessel that spearheaded the D-Day invasion
and played a vital part in the final victory of Britain and the Allies
in the Second World War.
This is an LCVP - a Landing Craft Vehicle and Personnel.
It was built to do a specific job -
to land troops on a hostile beach in the teeth of enemy fire.
Lord knows, she ain't pretty.
And those sharp corners make a seaman's heart bleed.
But she was the right boat at the right time.
In our hour of greatest need, this boat saved Britain!
And there are not many boats can claim that.
Developed from a Louisiana swamp boat,
the LCVP is one of the strangest craft ever to take to the water.
36 feet long and powered by a 250hp Detroit diesel,
she's capable of carrying a platoon of men and all their kit ashore
at 12 knots flat out.
By the end of World War Two,
over 20,000 of these extraordinary little craft had been built,
using production methods that revolutionised boat building.
Designing a boat like this called for radical thinking,
but cometh the hour, cometh the man,
and Andrew Higgins,
a hard-drinking, straight-talking American shipbuilder,
proved that this boat was the answer the Allies had been looking for.
But just how did this design come about?
And what was it about Higgins that made its creation possible?
Because make no mistake, this is an extraordinary boat
that goes against almost every rule of design.
Doing what no boat really wants to do,
leave the water and drive straight up the beach!
Ask any sailor where he does not want to be
and he will tell you on the beach, where the sea meets the land.
That's where the real danger is.
But at the end of World War Two, that's precisely where he had to be,
getting thousands and thousands of troops ashore
right here on this very beach.
So, how do you go about designing a boat that can sail for hours across the English Channel
and then deliver a platoon of almost 40 soldiers
straight into the teeth of enemy fire?
It's a huge challenge,
and one the Allies could ill afford to get wrong.
Nowadays we're so used to the idea of amphibious landings
that we take it for granted that military craft can motor up a beach
and deliver troops at full speed.
But between the wars, when military chiefs first considered the problem,
they faced a serious hurdle.
Traditional boats just couldn't handle the job.
They were great at sea,
but when the time came to step off and fight your way ashore,
the high sides and V-shaped hulls of conventional craft
meant that the men ran into all sorts of difficulties.
Back in the early days of World War Two,
we took a serious drubbing.
We managed to get the British expeditionary force off the beaches at Dunkirk with a ragtag Navy
of little boats begged borrowed and stolen from goodness knows where.
But if we were going to win the war a few years later,
we had to get back onto those French beaches
and this time it was a different story.
Now the Germans would be waiting.
Dug in, their machine guns zeroed, their mines laid,
just looking for the chance to shoot up anything that came their way.
It was a daunting prospect.
But one that needed addressing and fast,
if launching the huge D-Day invasion was to be successful.
The problem facing shipbuilders goes to the very heart of boat design.
Most ships tended to have deep V shaped entries,
great for keeping you upright in the water and cutting through the waves,
but a disaster when running aground.
What was needed was a whole new type of boat.
I've come here to meet an old ship mate, Ian McGilvery.
Ian is every inch a sailor man,
but the difference between him and me,
is that he is also an expert boat builder.
Hello, mate.
And to help illustrate the problem,
Ian's going to build a couple of very basic models
that will show us the two extremes of hull design.
Good bow, that, eh, Tom? Beautiful.
The first is a flat bottomed boat,
a box really.
And the second, its more usual V-shaped opposite number.
Each offers advantages and disadvantages
compared with the other.
OK.
But to understand fully what these are,
we'll have to float these boats in the water,
starting with the traditional V-shaped hull.
Do you want to give it a go? OK, here we go.
Oh, look at that! Useless! Well, that's no good then, is it?
Its no good for a landing craft, or anything else.
Put some ballast in it.
A few old nuts...
But once we add a bit of ballast, as you'd get in a boat of this type,
things improve dramatically.
The boat settles in the water, suddenly she's remarkably stable.
And with all that boat in the water she'll also handle well -
her draught will stop her being blown off course
and the V-shaped hull will chop readily through the waves.
If it's a landing craft, it's got everything you want
except for the fact when you put it on the beach,
it falls over.
No good. No good at all, is it?
Let's have a look at this one.
We'll start with it on land, which is what it's for!
Can't beat it, can you?
No, not at all.
If we put it on the water,
it's pretty good on the water as well on the face of things.
What happens if we put some weight on the side,
its absolutely amazingly stable.
You put a lot of weight on and it stays stable
and it's got to go a long way, a long, long way before it tips over.
In fact, even then it comes right the way up.
So it's not got a stability problem.
Just as an idea, load carrying ability, that's a lot of nuts there.
Lot of weight. Look at that.
That's huge! It's doing that,
because its got so much displacement, isn't it?
So far, so good.
But you really wouldn't want to take this design to sea.
The problem it has got, I think, is that if there's a sea running...
..It's going to pound something awful...
Come up over a wave, the bottom is just going to bang.
It will be an awful thing to steer because there's no keel,
there's nothing to stop it going sideways. No.
I mean, that's the shape a landing craft has to be,
cos starting from the land there's no choice.
But its not going to work like that.
It's got to be more sophisticated than that.
The flat-bottomed boat has a lot going for it,
but Ian and I suspect
there are going to be some serious disadvantages out on the water.
To find out what these may be, we're going to have to test
our tiny wooden model on a human scale.
LAUGHTER
However, I wasn't quite expecting this.
I've sailed on hundreds of boats over the years,
but this is the first time I've ever set sail in a skip.
But Ian thinks she'll float.
So here goes.
It'll be very interesting to see what happens now.
I've got my life jacket on so I'm ready for anything.
Lot of ballast in the bow here and we're starting to float.
And how are we floating?
She's feeling my weight,
but she's pretty good fore and aft actually.
Just about right
and she's blowing about like a crisp packet as predicted.
Oh!
LAUGHTER What do you think?
I was hoping it wasn't going to start so we wouldn't have to go, but never mind.
It feels more or less OK so far.
But how's she going to handle under power?
We'll give it some more.. Ohhh!
We've got to be careful we don't duck the stone under.
We've got this fore and aft trimish.
But if I go here and you put some power on,
will she squat and work?
There she goes. That's it.
So we're off.
Well, the good news is the skip floats.
The bad news is it handles like a dog!
Back in World War Two those guys really had their work cut out.
The first problem is direction. There's nothing gripping the water.
We're just about getting away with it here on the river,
but thrown in a few waves
and our square metal box will be all over the place.
But there's another problem - even worse.
It's called cavitation.
Every time we try to open up the engine we lose power,
because the flat bottom lifts
and channels air, not water, down onto the propeller.
On a V-shaped boat the propellers would be deep down in the water
and you wouldn't get this problem.
But you can't have them there on a landing craft,
they'll snag on the beach.
It's a catch 22 and it's one the boat designers
of World War Two were going to have to solve fast,
to have any chance of coming up with a successful landing craft.
Somehow those guys had to find a way of feeding water onto that propeller
without putting the propeller so low down
that it was going to graunch itself onto the beach
as they were driving in.
It's clear to me now that what they needed
was to combine the best of the stability and load-carrying box design
with the sea-keeping qualities of the V-shaped hull.
MUSIC: THEME FROM THE GREAT ESCAPE
By 1939, Britain's designers had already been developing a boat
called the LCA that combined these features.
It did the job, but it had some serious drawbacks.
With only 130hp under the bonnet, it wasn't notably fast or powerful.
And with a narrow door at the front
she could only carry men, not machines.
And with our shipyards under constant German aerial attack,
Britain would never be able to build enough of them
to equip a massive invasion force either.
Luckily our biggest ally, America, faced no such problems
when it came to building their own design of landing craft - the LCVP.
Jerry Stratham has written
the definitive history of the American landing craft
and its maverick designer, Andrew Jackson Higgins.
Higgins was not your normal industrialist.
He was hot tempered,
he was brilliant.
He had the ability to take wild ideas and turn them into reality.
He worked hard, he drank hard, he swore hard,
he grew up on the docks in the timber industry.
So he was like the kind of guys
that he had working for him in the shipyard.
But he was also educated and articulate enough
so he could go to Washington
and have conversations with President Roosevelt
or with generals and admirals.
Higgins was the right man for the job,
but he also happened to have the right boat,
which he'd designed himself to haul timber
in the shallow swamps around New Orleans.
In order to get the timber out,
Higgins built a boat he called the Eureka,
which was a shallow draft boat.
This was one of the original Higgins Eureka work boats.
And it could go over sand bars,
it could pull up on the side of a bayou,
it could pull in, turn around, pull back out again over the sandbars
and leave the same position.
The same qualities that later would be needed in a landing craft.
As its name suggests, the Eureka boat was a huge breakthrough.
By shaping a shallow, but immensely strong keel
to the boat's flat bottom,
the Eureka managed to combine
the seakeeping qualities of a traditional boat,
while still being able to take the ground like a flat-bottomed craft.
And by placing the boat's propeller into a tube inside the keel,
Higgins also managed to crack the tricky problem of cavitation.
The Eureka could operate at full power in only a few inches of water.
Higgins knew his design was the answer.
There was only one issue -
the age-old problem of getting the men off the boat and onto the beach.
Undeterred, Higgins set about redesigning his whole structure
to turn the entire bow section into a ramp.
Now the boat could unload its troops in seconds
and carry jeeps and guns too.
With this problem solved, the LCVP was born
and the orders started flooding in.
All Higgins had to do was work out how to build the LCVPs fast enough.
Up till now boat building had always been done one vessel at a time.
But Higgins had a better idea.
Taking his cue from Henry Ford,
he decided to build on four construction lines.
This meant his factory could turn out over 100 boats a week!
Higgins went from 50 employees in 1937 to 20,000 by 1943.
He was the design and production genius.
War, you didn't worry about the cost and he didn't,
he was worrying about the product.
He wanted to make sure that the soldiers hitting the beaches
had the best available boat that they could possibly have.
This is from the inside of one of his plants
showing the landing craft being produced.
I don't believe this!
This is four across.
It's called a bay, a production bay.
And they would move on a moveable assembly line.
It's like a car.
Like a little tiny motor car. Absolutely.
And once they got to the end of the bay, at the end of the plant,
they would be loaded on railroad cars and taken away.
He was mass producing them just like you'd produce an automobile. Wow!
Actually I rather like this picture because you can see
exactly the shape of the hull here and how it is working.
You can see it's almost a three-point landing, isn't it?
And you can see how each individual has a specific task
that they have to do as the boat moves along.
Higgins also covered the factory with slogans
to encourage the workers.
The message - "The guy who relaxes is helping the Axis"
hanging in the main production hall.
With the boss's production genius and forceful personality,
Higgins Industries turned out over 20,000 LCVPs.
But today there are less than five still functioning
and only one in the UK.
She's here, 100 miles from the sea in Nottingham.
Boat builder Nick Gates is one of the few men
who actually knows how to handle an original LCVP
and I'm keen to hear his thoughts on this strangest of craft.
Well, here it is.
Yep, here it is, an LCVP.
Yeah, it's a funny thing, you know.
I know it does the job, but it just, it does offend my eye as a seamen.
Well, you're right. It's not pretty.
It's not pretty, but it's a fantastic piece of kit.
My first impressions are of the box-like nature of the craft.
But that was how it had to be.
It was designed to carry 36 troops or small fighting vehicles
and for the D-Day landings these boats were packed to the gills.
It still looks very square in the water, just like the skip we tested,
but Nick assures me there's a lot more subtlety to the design.
Although you think it's just a basic box,
a basic box is actually a very hard shape to keep strong.
If you imagine an empty shoe box, you take the lid off, it's quite floppy.
If you cut the end out, it's even worse.
So this is actually very clever.
There's a lot of reinforcing in the corners,
on the deck and below the hull.
It's actually a very hard shape to keep stiff.
It does look like an ugly box,
but actually it's a very, very fine piece of marine design. Yeah.
Nick's clearly a fan.
But what about the men who actually had to drive these boats back on D-Day?
Roy Nelson was 19 when he skippered an LCVP during the Normandy landings
and I've invited him back to drive this LCVP today.
This must bring back some memories for you, Roy?
Oh, you can say that again. It's...
I've got mixed emotions.
I'm excited, apprehensive... Yeah.
And of course - nostalgia.
How long's it been since you were on one of these boats?
I've not actually been on one of these LCVPs for 65 years.
The end of 1944.
So it's a long time.
And I think of the chaps who aren't around any more. Yeah.
On June 6th 1944,
175,000 troops set out across the Channel to recapture Europe,
with 1,500 of Higgins' boats in the front line.
Obviously, we knew we were training to land on some beaches somewhere.
Presumably France.
But we didn't know where.
We didn't know up until nearly the time.
When we finally did set sail,
it was amazing.
I'd never seen anything like it before or since.
The vast armada of all types of shipping.
All shapes and sizes.
All going across the Channel.
Ships as far as the eye could see.
You'd think, "Well, this is big. This is it". My word!
You are finally...
When you're actually on the way, you realise this is it.
It was a mixture of excitement and apprehension. Of course.
"What's going to happen?" etc.
But generally, it was accepted.
You knew you were trained for a job
and this was the job and you were going to do it.
Now, after all those years of development,
the LCVP was facing the ultimate test of its ability.
And today we're going to discover for ourselves
how this boat really handles.
As soon as we pull away
and the throaty Detroit two-stroke diesel starts to roar,
all of my preconceptions about this vessel are blown away.
She's got effortless power from her 250hp engine
and in a unique way, she's graceful too.
A testimony to Mr Higgins and his revolutionary hull.
And so simple to drive with a steering wheel
that can be operated with one hand
while you control the gearshift and throttle with the other.
The driver can perform complex manoeuvres
with speed and confidence.
This boat really is a truly wonderful vessel.
There is so much racket from that diesel back there
that I've had to come forward to talk.
But the amazing thing about this boat
is that she really does manoeuvre
and I'm astonished at the acceleration.
There's a lot of power there.
You could take a lot of men in here, vehicles, push them up the beach.
I can see how it's going to happen now and what really does impress me,
is the way Nick was able to spin the boat round, in the river.
Higgins had taken his Eureka boat
and transformed it into a perfect amphibious landing craft.
From humble beginnings,
the Allies now had a boat they could absolutely trust
to do the job it was specifically designed to do.
Now I'm keen to see for myself
just how this boat delivers in the ultimate test.
Leaving the safety of deep water and running up the shore.
Well, the boat's impeccable.
A masterpiece of design.
But this isn't the sort of shore she was built to come up.
She was designed for sterner stuff,
the beaches of Normandy under heavy fire, driven by men like Roy.
65 years on, Roy is clearly enjoying being back on an LCVP.
But on the eve of D-Day,
the emotions he and the other soldiers were feeling
would have been very different.
Now the landing craft were on their way.
The weather forecast for the day was good, a force three westerly,
but of course as so often happens
that wasn't what was served up.
Instead, it blew a lot harder
and as the LCVPs came into shore
they had 5ft slammers coming in right under their bows.
Horrible conditions that would test any boat,
let alone one charged with putting men ashore
onto a beach under a hail of lead.
Right here on this beach
is where the Allies were finally going to find out the truth
about the Higgins landing craft.
Was it going to work under fire?
The official record of that day states -
"Within ten minutes of the ramps being lowered,
"the leading companies had become almost incapable of action".
"Every officer and sergeant killed or wounded".
But in the face of such desperate adversity,
the LCVPs kept on pushing up the beaches
and gradually the men they brought ashore
overcame the German positions.
Looking out at this peaceful beach today,
it's hard to imagine thousands upon thousands
of these brave little landing craft
coming in from England over the horizon in the morning,
loaded up with what to the defenders
must have looked like a whole population of soldiers on board.
The boats did their job, my word they did.
And now it was up to the guys.
Almost 5,000 British, American and Canadian troops
lost their lives that day.
And the cemeteries of Normandy still bear witness
to the sacrifice they made on the windswept beaches below.
No war is without its losses.
But these brave men and the LCVPs that carried them
had launched the attack that would ultimately bring about
the defeat of Germany and the liberation of Europe.
And today, the LCVP is still going strong.
It's faster and better equipped with a 21st century design,
but it's still recognisably based on the boat
produced by Andrew Higgins all those years ago.
In fact, the LCVP is such an essential part of Britain's modern armed forces
that huge ships are now built
to launch them from anywhere in the world.
This is HMS Bulwark,
one of the Royal Navy's biggest and best equipped ships.
She's almost 600ft long and displaces over 20,000 tonnes.
But the real reason for her existence
is hidden deep inside her hull.
A huge dry dock that can be flooded at the touch of a button,
ready to launch an armada of LCVPs towards the shore.
65 years old and still going strong,
the basic LCVP design has never been bettered.
A boat perfectly designed for the job in hand.
A little ship that saved Britain in our hour of greatest need.
And you can't ask more of a boat than that!
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