A tour of the Porthcurno Telegraph Museum, Penzance, Cornwall
A short video guide to Porthcurno Telegraph Museum, Penzance, Cornwall. A fascinating family-friendly museum. Discover the hub of Britain's global communications in the secret WW2 tunnels.
Publisher: Porthcurno Telegraph Museum and Visit Cornwall Producer:
Telegraph Museum Porthcurno
We took a visit to the Porthcurno Telegraph Museum which is located in the small coastal village of Porthcurno Cornwall, UK. Porthcurno was the point at which many submarine telegraph cables—transatlantic and to other locations—came ashore.
A really enjoyable place to visit for all ages, and learnt many things we did not know about.
Find more at there web site telegraphmuseum.org
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Please watch: So In Love Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark
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Porthcurno Telegraph Museum
Porthcurno Telegraph Museum
Porthcurno Telegraph Museum: the Regeneration Room
This videogram was made free of charge for the Porthcurno Undersea Telegraph Museum in Cornwall by Audio Video South West. It plays in the museum to inform vistiors.
PORTHCURNO TELEGRAPH MUSEUM
Communications History: Porthcurno Telegraph Museum.wmv
Porthcurno valley, in the far west of Cornwall, was the hub of international cable communications from 1870-1970 and a training college for the communications industry until 1993.
In World War 2, secret tunnels were dug by Cornish miners to house an underground building and the entire telegraph operations. These bomb proof/gas proof tunnels provided 14 secure cables out of the UK to its allies.
A University of Exeter Case Study - Porthcurno Telegraph Museum
To find out more visit
Porthcurno Telegraph Museum - MN-ARTS 2013/04/06
Kurt Nordwall/KD0LKC gave us a report and slide show on his visit to the Porthcurno Telegraph Museum in England.
See more on our site at
BBC Cornwall author Jon Gliddon interview new spy thriller Porthcurno Telegraph Museum 30/10/2015
The picturesque Cornish fishing village of Porthcurno quickly became one of the most heavily defended locations in Britain during WWII. By 1939 there were 14 armoured submarine cables at Porthcurno totalling 150,000 miles in length, capable of transmitting and receiving up to two million words a day. It was for a time the largest cable station in the world. Communication was vital to the Allies winning World War II and the survival of Porthcurno Telegraph Station was critical to that victory. Immediately after war broke out in 1939, 300 infantrymen arrived to protect the station.
The Germans never did attack Porthcurno, but as a key strategic facility for the Allies they must have thought about it. Jon Gliddon has set his new spy thriller at Porthcurno during WWII. Break in Communication imagines what might have happened had Porthcurno ever come under serious threat.
Available now from all good bookshops:
See Jon's website for more information:
A visit to The Telegraph Museum in Portcurno, Cornwall | AD Press Trip
We love discovering off the beaten track attractions that turn out to be tremendous all-round family pleasers. And the Telegraph Museum in Porthcurno, Cornwall, does this in spades. We were invited to visit the museum by Cornwall 365, which is championing the county's cultural and heritage activities. It has to have been one of my favourite museums we've been to with the girls and is a must if you're visiting Cornwall with kids.
Read the full review on Tin Box Traveller:
Disclosure: we were invited to review The Telegraph Museum and were given free entry for our family group. All opinions are my own and those of my family.
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My camera: this Youtube video was filmed using a GoPro and iPhone. I edit on iMovie on my Mac
Hi there, I’m Claire – a mid-30s mummy to a busy primary schooler and smiley toddler, and wife to a Royal Navy Officer.
Tin Box Traveller is a UK family travel blog that I use to share our adventures and inspire others to explore new places. I’ve been a wanderer from the day dot. Some of my earliest memories are from living in Hong Kong while my dad was working there until I started school.
Back in the UK my weekends and holidays as a pre-teen and teen were spent caravanning all over the UK. So it’s no surprise that exploring the great outdoors and new places are two of my biggest passions. Meet the rest of the team:
The Single-Needle Telegraph: what is it?
An introduction to the single-needle telegraph.
William Lynd, author of ‘The Practical Telegraphist’, described the single-needle telegraph as ‘merely a vertical galvanometer’. It is a galvanometer, and it uses one magnetic needle to visually communicate over a great distance. Because it has only one needle, we can call it a binary system – the needle can only go left and right. As a result, the single-needle telegraph uses a code to communicate individual letters. Our telegraph, here, is using Morse Code.
So that we can understand, let’s have a look at its history. In eighteen twenty, Hans Christian Oersted, a Danish chemist and physicist, discovered that a magnetic field could be generated using electricity. In the same year, the galvanometer was invented by Johann Schweigger, a German physicist and chemist. The galvanometer lent itself to ‘distant writing’ and it wasn’t long before it was being developed as a means of communication.
The five-needle telegraph was developed by William Fothergill Cooke and Charles Wheatstone in the eighteen-thirties for a recent innovation – the railway – even then spreading across Great Britain. This five-needle telegraph puts five galvanometers on a diamond grid pattern to spell out individual words. Cooke and Wheatstone later introduced a double-needle telegraph in order to cut down on the number of electrical wires needed to make the telegraph work.
This was superseded in the eighteen-forty-three with the single needle telegraph, using – you won’t be surprised to hear – a single galvanometer to move a single needle. The system works using electro-magnetism. A magnetised needle is placed in the centre of a coil of wire. The coil is electrified with an electric current, creating an electro-magnetic field. The magnetised needle in this field reacts to it re-orientating itself at right angles to the wire. By arranging the coils and the needle in a particular manner, the needle is deflected to left or right, according to the direction of the electrical current passing through the wire. In order to send any message using only one needle, some form of code had to be developed. This was the single needle alphabet code. Here, though, instead of using the single needle alphabet code, we can see our telegraph using Morse code.
Many single-needle telegraphs have survived to the present day. This one dates from eighteen forty-four and was developed for the General Post Office. As you can see, it uses a handle rather than a key. The single needle telegraph superseded by a phalanx of new technologies, including the ABC telegraph, and was eventually eclipsed . . . by acoustic telegraphy.
#telegraphy #electromagnetism #galvanometer #Wheatstone
Porthcurno, England: Cornwall's Coastal Gem
More info about travel to Cornwall: With its graceful arc and golden sand, the beach at Porthcurno seems to have been imported from some far-away tropical paradise. For some history and culture, travelers can visit the Porthcurno Telegraph Museum and open-air Minack Theatre.
At you'll find money-saving travel tips, small-group tours, guidebooks, TV shows, radio programs, podcasts, and more on this destination.
Porthcurno Telegraph Museum & The Minack Theatre By Drone 4K
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The Emden's Last Job
The EMDEN’s Last Job: the German attack on the Direction Island cable station in order to cut the telegraph cables, November 1914
At the start of the First World War, the German East Asia Squadron (under Vice-Admiral Maximilian von Spee) was on the China Station. It consisted of two armoured cruisers and three light cruisers. One of the light cruisers was the Emden, under the command of Captain Karl von Müller. With war declared, the East Asia Squadron sallied forth against Allied targets across the Pacific. The Emden was detached from the Squadron on the fourteenth of August, nineteen-fourteen, and sailed for the Indian Ocean, there to spread chaos and confound the enemy as much as possible. For two months, the Emden did just that.
By November, Captain von Müller had decided to attack Allied communications. The Emden, in company with the captured collier, Buresk, approached Direction Island in the Cocos Islands. It was on this island (the largest in the Cocos Group) that the Eastern Extension Australasia and China Telegraph Company had established a twenty-nine-man cable station.
It was known the station was the relay for two submarine cables: the Australia-India cable, and the Australia-Zanzibar-Africa cable. Strategically, it was an obvious target for a German raider keen on damaging British interests in the Indian Ocean.
The Germans’ plan was to land a party (under First Officer Hellmuth von Mücke) on the island who would destroy the wireless equipment and sever the cables.
On Sunday the eighth of November, the landing party was drawn up under von Mücke’s command. They would use the Emden’s steam-pinnacle and two cutters. The Buresk was detached and ordered to move off some thirty nautical miles to await the signal to ‘Close-up’ once the Emden had captured the cable station.
Early Monday morning, the Emden steamed in sight of Direction Island. The German cruiser usually had three funnels, but in its raiding around the Indian Ocean, it had adopted the guise of a British armoured cruiser, H.M.S. Minotaur, by erecting an extra dummy funnel. On the morning of the ninth, it did so again. It dropped anchor in the harbour and launched its boats – the steam-pinnacle, armed with Maxim guns, towing the two cutters, and all three flying the flag of Imperial Germany.
The weather was favourable, so Captain von Müller took the opportunity to order the Buresk to close-in for coaling. The message was overheard by a wireless operator at the cable station who had been chatting to Singapore. At around the same time, the station’s medical officer, Dr Harold Ollerhead, watching the cruiser’s approach, saw through the Emden’s disguise. The element of surprise was no-longer a surprise. The island woke up to the Emden’s presence. The duty officer spotted the approaching boats in the water and cabled Singapore that the Emden was landing an armed party. The news was relayed around the world and reached the telegraph company’s headquarters at Electra House in London in minutes . . .
In this video, we tell the tale of the German light cruiser Emden's raid on Direction Island, in the Cocos Islands, during the First World War.
Some of the images in this video are from our archive collection.
#Emden #cables #FirstWorldWar #CocosIslands #submarinecables #Sydney
PORTHCURNO
Beautiful Water Fall
Per mare loquimur: a brief history of CS Recorder
The #cableship #RECORDER, the third ship to bear the name, was built by Swan Hunter in 1954.
It was based on C.S. STANLEY ANGWIN (1952), only enlarged. Its cable capacity was more: 21,000 cubic feet.
Built at the Neptune Yard, RECORDER was 340 feet in length, with a beam of 45 feet.
It was launched on 3rd May, 1954. Present: Swan Hunter director Mr P. Denham Christie and Mrs Chapling (wife of C&W managing director), and Mrs Nicholls (wife of C&W chairman Major-General Nicholls), who did the naming.
Twin screws, triple expansion engines, driving at a service speed of 12 knots. Its tanks could store 420 miles of deep-sea cable.
RECORDER inherited this plaque from the second RECORDER (ex-HMCS IRIS), commemorating its capture of Count Luckner in 1917.
Its first captain was Mr Charles C. Muckleston, of Whyteleafe in Surrey. Its first chief engineer was Mr James H. (‘Thunder’) Mackinlay of Redcar.
On its trials, RECORDER reached a speed of 13.5 knots.
It was fitted with a gas turbine bow thruster, making it more manoeuvrable. This was later removed and replaced with a Gill thruster.
Its maiden voyage was due to be in the Mediterranean. It got as far as the Thames Estuary when disaster struck.
At 1:12pm on 27th August, as RECORDER was off the Mid Barrow light, it was struck by a Danish freighter, URUGUAY. The cableship was hit on its starboard quarter, leaving a hole 30 feet by 25 feet. RECORDER limped on to Gravesend for temporary repairs. It then returned to the Tyne for more permanent repairs.
After its trip back to the Tyne, RECORDER was ready to start its career.
RECORDER’s first job was to pass ashore the Gibraltar-3 cable shore-end at #Porthcurno.
The cable was hauled up the beach by 100 students. Captain Muckleston sent a message via the cable thanking Porthcurno’s ‘well-fed students’.
RECORDER spent the next couple of years in home waters. It loaded 1,100 miles of cable from the factory in Greenwich, visited Lagos in Nigeria (where its crew cheered HM the Queen), repaired the Porthcurno-Carcavelos cable, and responded to a distress call from sinking cadet ship MOYANA.
It was also visited by C&W chairman Sir Godfrey Ince, seen here in RECORDER's wheel-house. And here, in the cable test room, listening to the Chief Electrician explaining the apparatus. And here, on the foredeck, where RECORDER's Capt. Alan Tudor is explaining a Lucas cutting-and-holding grapnel.
RECORDER was sent to #Singapore to relieve ANGWIN, which was Cable & Wireless’s cable maintenance ship in the port.
Here, it would service the 20,000 miles of cable in the Indian and Pacific Oceans for the next 30 years. At this time, its complement was: 15 deck officers, engineers, electricians, 1 purser, 1 surgeon, 11 petty officers, 20 engine-room staff, 34 deck crew, 19 stewards and cooks.
Now, a quick tour. This is the wheel-house. The officers' dining-room. The furniture aboard was weathered sycamore and ice-birch, and the bulkheads were lined with veneers of bird’s-eye maple, sycamore, avodire, and eucalyptus. The Chief Officer's cabin. The radio-room (in this 1954 photograph, featuring Radio Officer J. B. Anderson). The main electrical switchboard-room. The engine-room. Here is the cable-laying equipment on the foredeck.
In 1957, RECORDER installed the first electronic submarine cable repeater in the British Commonwealth’s Indian and Pacific Oceans cable network. This was off Australia, Cocos-Cottesloe No.1
It was involved with #SEACOM-2 in 1964, including the laying of its shore-ends at Sabah, Borneo. Later, after the Commercial Pacific Cable Company came to an end, RECORDER was sent out to recover some of its cable.
By 1968, RECORDER was in the Mediterranean, engaged in the TAT-5 Conil survey. In September, a Spanish trawler out of Cadiz, PALACIO-VALDES, was spotted in distress. RECORDER’s captain, N. H. Smith, took the cable-ship to its aid. RECORDER towed the trawler to within sight of Cadiz, but PALACIO-VALDES sank by its stern. The crew was taken off by RECORDER’s boats. They are seen here climbing up the cable-ship's side.
In 1971, it joined RETRIEVER in surveying for #BRACAN, the Brazil-Canary Islands cable. #RETRIEVER (Capt. W. T. Goodale) surveyed through May into June, when RECORDER (Capt. R. B. Riddle) took over.
After the survey, RECORDER returned to its Singapore duties for #CableandWireless.
RECORDER continued to repair cables in the Indian and Pacific Oceans until it was finally scrapped in 1986.
Porthcurno Engineering College: a Cable & Wireless Staff Film, 1960s
From the #CableandWireless Archives held at our museum comes this #archival colour #film from the 1960s.
It shows students at #Porthcurno Engineering College undergoing training in such disciplines as radio, ARQ (automatic error correction), and tropospheric scatter.
There is also the leisure side of studying at the college, such as horse-riding, visits to #Penzance, performances at the #Minack Theatre, and the beach.
Also there is footage of #PrincePhilip visiting the #cableship #Mercury, and the stations in Hong Kong and #Ascension Island.
Pulse of the World: The ambience of Porthcurno Beach
This is the beach at Porthcurno in Cornwall. Under these sands run fibre optic submarine cables, carrying modern communications (including the Internet) into the UK.
A century and a half ago, it was the scene of an historic milestone in global communications.
On this beach – in June, 1870 – the telegraph cable to India was landed. Originally, it had been intended to land the cable in Falmouth, but that port was a busy one, and so a less busy landing site was sought out. Porthcurno fitted the bill.
The cable ship INVESTIGATOR landed the shore-end, whilst far out to sea a larger ship, HIBERNIA, laid the main cable. The final splice was made on Wednesday 8th June.
The cable revolutionised communications between Britain and India. What had once taken six weeks to send a message, now took far less time. In April, 1871, Porthcurno’s Assistant Superintendent George Spratt wrote in his diary: ‘Boat race (Cambridge won) expressed to Bombay in 9 minutes.’
There was very little in Porthcurno until the arrival of the cable. A cable station was established here, along with staff quarters.
The cable station was known as ‘PK’ to telegraphists the world over. It was the most important communications hub in the world, linking Great Britain not just to the Empire but to its allies and the rest of the world.
‘Day and night the traffic pours through, and the cables never sleep. Wars, rumours of wars, defeat, victory, commerce, sport, deaths and births, the news is flashed to and fro from the uttermost ends of the earth. Truly it could be said that in these days the cableman feels the pulse of the world.’ – a telegraph worker.
Submarine cables still run under the sands, connecting the world.
#Porthcurno #cables #ambience
Porthcurno Telegraph Museum Undersea Cable Termination Hut
For anyone interested in the history of long distance international communications, this is a must see. Most of the museum in located in underground bunkers but part of it is the cable hut on the beach where under sea telegraph cables were brought ashore and terminated.
Around the walls of the hut, which measures approximately 4 x 2.5 metres, are the cable ends of the cables to places such as Gibraltar, Vigo (Spain), Fayal (Azores), Brest (France), St John (Newfoundland), and Bilbao. At these locations, operators would receive the message, and if necessary re-route it to the next location on the undersea cable network.
Morse code was used at a very slow speed of about 6 word per minute. Only one message could be sent at any one time on a given cable which gave rise to the high cost of sending telegrams until the later part of the 20 Century when larger capacity coaxial cables and eventually fibre optic cables become available.
A Cable to India: the story of the 1870 submarine telegraph cable from Bombay to Porthcurno
Mr John Pender, a Scottish cotton merchant based in Manchester, had become interested in the possibilities of submarine telegraphy. He was a director of the ATLANTIC TELEGRAPH COMPANY, which had made the first attempts to lay a successful Transatlantic Cable in 1857, and 1858, and 1865.
With the successful laying of the 1866 Transatlantic cable came the confidence to risk a submarine cable venture to India. Overland lines had already been established, but these were slow and unreliable. A submarine cable, it was rightly thought, would improve communications between Great Britain and India.
In 1868, the ANGLO-MEDITERRANEAN TELEGRAPH COMPANY came into being and laid a submarine cable from Malta to Alexandria, in Egypt. This opened the way for a viable cable to India, and so John Pender formed the BRITISH INDIAN SUBMARINE TELEGRAPH COMPANY. The aim was to link Suez and Bombay (now Mumbai) by cable, and link Alexandria with Suez by landline. With the Alexandria-Malta cable already in place, it would leave only the Malta-Great Britain sections to be laid.
To this end, Pender formed the FALMOUTH, GIBRALTAR & MALTA TELEGRAPH COMPANY. The cables themselves would be made by the TELEGRAPH CONSTRUCTION & MAINTENANCE COMPANY, known as TELCON, and formed by Pender himself by amalgamating the GUTTA PERCHA COMPANY with GLASS ELLIOT . . .
The Chiltern arrived in Bombay on Wednesday 26th January, 1870. Two days later, she was joined by the Great Eastern. By the end of Monday 7th February, the Chiltern had laid and buoyed the shore-end. A week later, the Great Eastern spliced on and began paying out towards Aden . . .
#telegraphy #GreatEastern #India #Porthcurno #JohnPender #1870