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.

History

The name probably comes from the Portuguese Cabo Raso, flat cape, on maps of the early 16th century, and Sir Humphrey Gilbert sailed past it in 1583 on his way home after claiming St John's for Elizabeth I. From 1859 to 1866 the Associated Press kept a news boat here to meet liners from Europe and telegraph their news to New York, the first wireless station in Newfoundland was built here in 1904, and on the night the Titanic sank it was the last land station to pick up her distress calls and relayed the news to the world (Wikipedia, Cape Race).

Highlights

• 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.

Good to know

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.