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"Wavescan" is a weekly program for long distance radio hobbyists produced by Dr. Adrian M. Peterson, Coordinator of International Relations for Adventist World Radio. AWR carries the program over many of its stations (including shortwave). Adrian Peterson is a highly regarded DXer and radio historian, and often includes features on radio history in his program. We are reproducing those features below, with Dr. Peterson's permission and assistance.
Wavescan N659, October 10, 2021
The Cornwall Ship Mirage
It is reported that a 52 year old local citizen who was taking a morning stroll along the coastline of Cornwall in England (quite near the town of Penzance) with his Terrier dog on February 26 earlier this year (2021), photographed the mirage image of a commercial cargo ship that seemed to be floating above the skyline. This photograph of a Norwegian tanker in full color went viral worldwide via the internet, and it was reproduced in color in television programs, and on the front page of national newspapers. In all of these copied media reports, the mirage photograph was said to be a genuine photograph of what the photographer himself observed, a cargo vessel apparently floating above the skyline, a mirage.
It is true, a mirage is an apparition of a real object or an imagined object that seems to be out of location. During very hot weather, a haze or a mirage may be visible which, for example, gives the appearance of water on the surface of the roadway. In many countries around the world, mirage reports have indicated the sight of towns or villages just over the horizon, sometimes right way up and sometimes upside down. Non-existent ships have been seen at a distance, and islands or mountain ranges have been observed.
However, as reported in Wikipedia, it should be noted that mirage images, whether photographed or simply seen by the observer, are not stable images of the real object; instead, the mirage will appear to shimmer or vibrate, it is ever changing its appearance, it will appear distorted, and it will be blurred. There are occasions when the mirage will appear, and then disappear, and then reappear again.
Incidentally, one of the wartime episodes of the children's radio serial in Australia, The Search for the Golden Boomerang, focused on a mirage sequence in the Great Outback. The 1441 quarter hour episodes of The Search for the Golden Boomerang were written by Laura Bingham, they were produced in the studios of mediumwave 2UW in Sydney, and they were broadcast on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday evenings at 6:15 pm over a loosely coupled network of mediumwave radio stations in each state of Australia. The first broadcast of this children's serial was in 1940, and the series ended in 1951.
The story line in the Golden Boomerang fantasy focused on Mr. and Mrs. John Harvey, together with their early teenage daughter, Peggy, who were prospecting for gold in the outback desert areas of the Australian continent. Their lives were saved from tragedy when an early teenage Aboriginal boy named Tuckonie came across them. Tuckonie was out searching in the central desert areas of Australia for the fabulous (and, we might add, non-existent) Golden Boomerang, which, if found, would supposedly bring good fortune to their tribe.
This program was on the air in South Australia from mediumwave station 5DN (not 5AD as some historic reports state), which at the time was located on the 12th floor of the CML Building in Adelaide's Main Square Mile. Their 500 watt transmitter on 960 kHz was previously on the air with 2GB in Sydney, and it was installed at the top of the CML Building in Adelaide for 5DN in 1936. Their country relay station back then was 5RM near Renmark, with 2 kW on 810 kHz.
The photograph showing the Cornwall ship mirage seems to be too perfect and too well formed to be an actual mirage. At least one newspaper in England, and also a few tweeters on the internet, have suggested that there is an alternative answer to this mirage story (perhaps digital tampering, they have suggested), so perhaps further information over a period of time will produce a satisfactory resolution to this apparent enigma.
Some thirty miles out west from Land's End at the tip of the Cornish peninsula lie the Isles of Scilly, an archipelago of 140 islands, 5 of which are inhabited. These Atlantic islands operate under their own separate local authority as part of the county of Cornwall, their main industry is tourism, and their main export is cut flowers (in particular daffodils) for the London market.
According to the local historians, a Marconi wireless station was installed at the Telegraph Tower on the island of St. Mary's, the major island in the Isles of Scilly, in 1898. The earliest known callsign was TVP, and this location was in continuous usage for wireless and radio communication up until the end of World War II.
In December 1904, the underwater cable between the Isles of Scilly and the English mainland at Penzance in Cornwall malfunctioned. Communication between the islands and the mainland was taken over by the navy-operated, Marconi-equipped wireless station at Telegraph Tower on St. Mary's Island.
At 1:30 a.m. on April 18, 1910, the passenger liner SS Minnehaha, callsign MMA, ran aground on rocks in the Scilly Isles while en route across the Atlantic from New York to London. The wireless distress signal in Morse Code was heard at Falmouth, and three tugs were sent out to aid the stricken liner, which was ultimately refloated.
A combination radio TV retransmission system is now installed near the Telegraph Tower as a relay facility for BBC radio and TV programming from the mainland. A local community FM station was inaugurated on September 3, 2007, with 100 watts on 107.9 MHz, under the identification slogan Radio Scilly. The station call was changed to Islands FM on February 1, last year (2020).
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Audio Insert: Islands FM, ID announcement in English. |