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Holiday to Cornwall

A boat trip outing is filmed during a family holiday to Falmouth.

Amateur film 1953 10 mins Silent

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Overview

An amateur enthusiast steadily films a boat trip from Falmouth around the Fal estuary and to St Mawes on the Roseland peninsula, the word ros meaning promontory. Roseland is seperated from the rest of the county of Cornwall by the River Fal. The natural harbour at Falmouth is the third deepest in the world after Rio de Janeiro and Sydney. The port and its Packet Quays grew around one estate, Arwenack which belonged to the Killigrew family.

Henry VIII built Pendennis Castle in the 1540s to protect shipping in the Carrick Roads estuary of the Fal and made John III Killigrew its first governor. Nearby Penryn was an earlier more important settlement. Falmouth Packets were first given royal assent by King Charles II and Falmouth later became a Royal Mail Packet Station in 1688. Packet boats delivered bullion and mail all around the world and were vital to the British Empire and its trade. Shipping is still important to Falmouth and the National Maritime Museum Cornwall opened here in 2003. Pleasure boats cruises run from the Prince of Wales Pier to Truro, St Mawes and the Helford River and remain popular excursions for tourists in the summer.