At the Cornish fishing harbour of Newlyn, Nick Crane re-lives an astonishing,
unsung feat of heroic British seamanship. In 1854, a tiny fishing boat, The
Mystery, set sail from Newlyn to make the 12,000 mile voyage to Melbourne. She
was the smallest boat ever to attempt the journey, but the seven Cornishmen on
board were prepared to risk their lives in the world's wildest seas to join the
Australian gold rush.

In the ship-building town of Barrow-in-Furness, Dick Strawbridge explores a
forgotten top secret project involving building airships that might rival the
German zeppelins. In the face of entrenched opposition, the venture would be
dubbed 'the work of an idiot' by one royal navy admiral. Meanwhile the zeppelins
soared to new heights, the unlikely secret of their success being the cow guts
from which they made the gas-bags which kept them aloft.

Elsewhere, Tessa Dunlop heads to Portsmouth to discover the hidden history of
the tattoo, Mark Horton joins an archaeological dig at the Irish Pompeii in
Northern Ireland and Ruth Goodman investigates how the building of a new harbour
and docks at Birkenhead would lead to the opening of the world's first municipal
park there in 1847.

There is also a celebration of a classic piece of British eccentricity at
Peasholm Park, in Scarborough, where, in a tradition going back more than 80
years, staff from Scarborough council take to the boating pond concealed inside
man-sized model warships, and boldly facing the torpedoes, shellfire and dive
bombers of a hostile fleet.