For our Kids In Museums Takeover Day students from Exeter University, took over our engagement team and delivered a climate themed workshop for King Charles Primary School in Falmouth.
Eerie Stories and Haunting Halloween Tales
Tales as old as time, ghosts stories have been around for centuries, we share with some of our own from Porthcurno to out at sea.
Monarch Under Fire
The history of the Second World War is one rich in stories and those of cableships are no less courageous and hazardous than those of warships. Learn about a ‘friendly’ fire incident with the cableship Monarch.
What is a cableship?
Discover the history of cableships from the early ships repurposed to lay the first telegraph cables across the Atlantic, to the development of purpose built cableships that lay and repair fibre optic cables today.
The Lady and the Wolfpack
Our cableship blog series continues with this account from the Second World War. In 1943, cable repair ship, Lady Denison-Pender, is escorted on hazardous duties by an armed convoy, in what is to be a very close call with a U-boat wolf-pack near the Spanish Sahara.
The End of the Grappler
Duncan Mackenzie explores the fateful story of the cableship Grappler which got caught in the pyroclastic flow of the Mont Pelée volcano eruption of 1902. Part of our cableship blog series.
Colonia vs the U.S. Navy
Duncan Mackenzie continues his cableship blog series with a story about the British cableship Colonia being fired upon by the US Navy in 1920!
Recovering the Titanic’s Dead: the Mackay-Bennett
Our Digital Collections Officer, Duncan Mackenzie, looks at the cable ship the Mackay-Bennett and it’s role in recovering the deceased from the Titanic.
Congor Bay Satellite Earth Station Revisted
Explore the site of the Satellite Earth Station in Congor Bay, Barbados, with PK Porthcurno volunteer Robert de Corday Long, who worked for Cable & Wireless when the station was originally opened in 1972.
Five (-ish) Cableships called Retriever
Our Digital Collections Officer, Duncan Mackenzie, explores the history of five cableships, each named Retriever.
The Great Eastern
Duncan Mackenzie, our Digital Collections Officer, explores the history of Isambard Brunel’s SS Great Eastern. The SS Great Eastern was a formidable but flawed iron ship that laid the first successful transatlantic cable in 1866.
Rotokura/Cable Bay, Wakapuaka – New Zealand’s first international telegraph cable
Vida Long is a graduate from Wellington University, New Zealand researches the site of New Zealand’s first international telegraph cable landing,