Cape Race

On the night of 14 April 1912 the Marconi operator at Cape Race, Jim Myrick, received the Titanic's distress traffic and relayed it; the station was the North American landfall for wireless traffic from ships and the news of the sinking reached the world through it. A reconstruction of the wireless room stands beside the lighthouse, with period equipment. The lighthouse itself, a cast iron tower of 1907, carries a lens of some seven tonnes. The headland has wrecked dozens of ships in fog and the seas around it are notorious. Mistaken Point, a UNESCO site with fossils of the earliest complex life, is a few kilometres away.

What you actually see

• The wireless room - a reconstruction of the station that took the Titanic call.
• The 1907 lighthouse - a cast iron tower with a seven-tonne lens.
• The wreck coast - a headland that has claimed dozens of ships in fog.
• Mistaken Point nearby - UNESCO fossils of the earliest complex organisms.

When to go

June to September; the site is seasonal and the gravel road is rough. Fog is extremely frequent here, which is precisely why the wrecks happened. Mistaken Point requires a guided hike.

Honest expectations

The access road is twenty kilometres of gravel. Fog can hide everything. Mistaken Point is a separate booked guided walk with limited places and its own long approach.

Nearby

Mistaken Point lies close; Ferryland is north.