Photography by Mark Carnaby

Parking up to the entrance of the PK Porthcurno museum of global communication which is housed in the former telegraph facility c.1950
Porthcurno Telegraph Station, or PK as it became known in telegraphic code, became the most important station in the world in the late Victorian era. This big illustration explains the importance of the telegraph and to where Porthcurno's undersea cables reached out into the world
Museum information plaque: Porthcurno's hidden history
Museum photo: 'The Gemini fibre optic cable was laid on Porthcurno beach in 1997 and terminates at new York.'
Museum information plaque: Cables - protecting the messages
Presentation case of Porthcurno-Bombay cables presented to Sir John Pender on completion of the first undersea telegraph cable to reach Bombay from Porthcurno in 1870
Cutaway of a insulated undersea telegraph cable
Museum information plaque: Cable telegraph comes to Porthcurno
Museum illustration: 'Illustration of the first cable being laid at Porthcurno in 1870 by the cableship Investigator'
In one of the museum rooms you will find a video presentation that explains the important workings of PK Porthcurno and the role it plays in World communications
Museum information plaque: Sending messages under the sea
An early electric telegraph machine that coded pulses of electric current through dedicated wires to transmit information over long distances
Museum diagram: 'The Morse Code Alphabet'
Single Morse Key c.1900 used to tap out the dots and dashes of Morse code
Electrical telegraph's came in all sorts of shapes and sizes like this radial one here
Various original telegram messages from 1800s - the average length of a telegram sent in the UK before 1950 was 14.6 words or 78.8 characters
There's a lot of great exhibits in the museum and in particular this area you will find a lot of information on the life's of PK's students & engineers
After training telegraph workers were sent all over the World to operate and maintain telegraph stations as this interactive map shows
Museum photo: 'Captain Halpin and Officers aboard the Great Eastern in 1869, laying the cable from Bombay to Aden.'
The binnacle from the cableship Mercury
A detailed & scaled model of the twin screw diesel electric cable laying vessel 'Mercury' built in 1962 by Cammell Laird & Co. (S&E) LTD Birkenhead
Museum diagram: 'Cross-section of a cableship'
Museum photo: 'The crew of the cableship Electra, all from the West Indies, formed an all-steel band and played homemade instruments.'
Museum photo: 'A telegraph worker's wife being carried by four local men.'
Museum information plaque: Wireless: a threat to the cable telegraph network

West Cornwall 2020 Fully Loaded Cycle Tour

Day Two – Part One: PK Porthcurno Museum of Global Communications | West Cornwall Fully Loaded Cycle Tour

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Photos of PK Porthcurno Museum of Global Communications


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This was my second cycle touring trip of 2020 after my ‘warm-up’ trip to Telford the month before (I say warm-up because it was my first trip out of town whilst we were dealing with the Covid crisis and was a good insight into seeing how cycle/camping worked under these conditions). I had planned to cycle around the South West Peninsula of Cornwall from Penzance to St Ives and along the coastline camping as I go.

Along the way I visited some of Cornwall’s most fascinating historic spots including the Porthcurno Museum of Global Communications formally the Porthcurno Telegraph Station, or PK, where the first international telegraph cable was brought ashore and was the World’s most important station during the late Victorian era and also Geevor Tin Mine, formerly North Levant Mine, which was operational between 1911 and 1990 and is now museum and heritage centre left as a living history of a working tin mine.

There was so much to say about this trip but as usual I’m going to let the photos tell the story and also the captions for each one and I can throughly recommend cycling/hiking around this area as there is so much history left in place to see!

Enjoy! 😀