NOTE TO EDITORS: Minister to host reception at Admiralty House Museum and Archives, Mount Pearl, June 27.

Kevin Aylward, Minister of Tourism, Culture and Recreation, invites members of the media to the opening reception celebrating Admiralty House Museum and Archives, Mount Pearl, as a Receiving the World communications site. The opening reception will take place at noon, Wednesday, June 27, at Admiralty House Museum, Old Placentia Road , Mount Pearl.

Now a lovely community museum in the heart of Mount Pearl, Admiralty House was once a key intelligence centre for British naval operations in the First World War.

Constructed inconspicuously in a farmer's field but as high above sea level as Signal Hill, H.M. Wireless Station Mount Pearl opened in 1915 and provided a significant wireless communications service in its short life. The station was one of 13 built worldwide for the British Admiralty during the First World War; it intercepted secret German naval transmissions, and even came under hostile fire.

During and after the war, the station communicated with shipping traffic, greatly aiding marine safety. In 1918, for example, the station picked up the single SOS from the S.S. Florizel after she struck the rocks near Cappahayden, and raised the alarm that spurred the rescue effort.
Though the station was decommissioned in 1925, two of the three original antennae were used until the 1950s, to broadcast first the Voice of Newfoundland (VONF) radio and later CBC radio from St. John's.

The City of Mount Pearl has long since grown up around the station. But Admiralty House exhibits�period radio equipment, an interactive communications exhibit and restored Commanding Officer's sitting room�make clear the role wireless played in war and peacetime marine communications more than 80 years ago, when H. M. Wireless Station Mount Pearl was an isolated but important sentinel. 

Media contact: Mary MacNab, Communications, Receiving the World, (709) 729-3813.

2001 06 22                                                       11:00 a.m.