Slave trading in illegal but slavers still sail the seas...

St Michael's Mount is not normally associated with industry but it was one of the ports used for shipping copper ore to Wales and in 1812 William Jenkin paid the Mount a visit.....

It used to take 32 men to unload a collier at Penzance, but Taylors now have a steam crane............

Vessel on fire reported off St Ives. Boats manned for rescue attempt…….

There a public, or is it private, enquiry in Sennen today. Did the lifeboatmen fail in their duty, that's the issue under scrutiny.

The steam packet ship Herald made her first voyage from Bristol to Hayle on 24 September 1831, ushering a new service which would bring numerous benefits to west Cornwall over the next 30 years.

On 24th August 1898 Ambrose Rouffignac of Newlyn passed his Master's Certificate. He was now a master mariner but who was this man with the strange foreign sounding name?

The vessels of the Welsh Fleet were small boats, worked hard, often under-manned and working to tight schedules and like the colliers of the North Sea they could be deadly on the unforgiving north coast of Cornwall.

Cornwall has had many links with Brittany over the centuries, one of the lesser known ones is the St Ives salt trade......

Don’t mention Trafalgar, and certainly don’t mention De Ruyter burning Chatham. For here we present: the Western Union Fleet....

St Peter’s Feast Day, June 29, 1885. Charles Campbell Ross, MP for St Ives, laid the foundation stone of the new South Pier at Newlyn.

The new pier, completed in 1813, represented an extension of 150 feet which significantly increased the capacity of the harbour but not all vessels wished to pay the increased dues...................

They came in cars from Newquay, Perranporth, Redruth, Camborne, Hayle, St Ives and scores of other places………. A sight that will probably never be repeated….. (The Cornishman 21 May 1936)

All is not well at St Ives. The fishermen have been bringing good money into the town – their official returns for the year up £5,000 last year to £52,000. Money like this should – surely – bring a substantial voice...........

The Channel swarmed with French privateers that seized English merchant vessels on an almost daily basis. This was the fate of the brig, Friendship – a vessel of 15 tons burthen, built at Swansea in 1801 and partly owned by Josias Sincock of St Ives.

The St Ives built schooner Eldred left for Swansea with her first cargo on 26 March 1829. Eldred had been launched on 20 January and Lloyd's Register for 1830 shows her to have been a single deck schooner of 93 tons skippered and owned by J. Matthews. Her crew on that first trip was probably something in order of five men and a ship's boy.

It’s first thing Monday morning. Never a good time, not for anyone who has to work for a living, but on the deck of the steamer Hayle the men are getting back into harness for another normal week’s routine.

Penzance has every reason to be pleased with itself. The new floating dock is nearing completion, and tonight, the engineers are to close the new coffer dam and keep the sea out.........

Cornubia was the only iron passenger vessel ever built in Cornwall and between 4000 and 5000 people are estimated to have turned up to watch the launch. 

But now, after the first winter of what will soon be called the Great War, those lads are not so sure. And in Penzance, on February 18^th 1915, matters have come to a head. They know that, should they be drowned or blown to smithereens, their families will be given ample compensation. But that doesn’t seem like enough.

“Arrived the Welsh fleet; some having been nearly twelve weeks on the voyage. Coals advanced 2s. Per way; price now 46s.”

The Nile was a four year old, iron-hulled, sail assisted steamer, a cargo ship with passenger accommodation. She hit the Stones at night in bad weather with the loss of all hands......

Like the Levant Packet which was launched at St Ives on 4th January 1828, Brunel's Great Eastern was also a difficult ship to launch and needed several attempts to get her afloat. On 31st January 1858 Great Eastern finally floated...

January 4th 1828. Launched at St Ives, the Levant Packet – a “fine-built brig of 190 tons burden”, built and registered at St Ives. “Finally” launched at St Ives, one might say. For this is not the first attempt

In his diary entry for 1 January 1870 John Tregerthen Short of St Ives records that the Wolf Rock Light was illuminated for the first time.