MARITIME
RADIO
STATIONS
OF THE
WORLD
Wick Radio/GKR - Coast Radio Station - Scotland - United Kingdom

Portpatrick
Radio
GPK

 

 

PRINCESS VICTORIA
GZMN

On 31st January 1953, Bob Mason was off duty and in his garden with the broadcast radio humming away in the background. As he worked away he heard the musical note of GPK, the Coast Radio Station at Portpatrick and at which Bob was a Radio Officer, breaking through. This was not an unusual event - but what Bob was hearing that day was unusual and he picked up a diary and a pen and started jotting the Morse Code signals as they came through.

On 31st January 1953 the railway steamer
PRINCESS VICTORIA, radio callsign GZMN,
on passage between Scotland and Northern Ireland,
sank with great loss of life

On 31st March 1982 the voice of Bob Mason on 2182kHz announced "All ships, this is Oban Radio - closing down - for ever." Bob had transferred from Portpatrick to Oban many years before and this last day of service for the Oban station also marked Bob's retiral from the Coast Radio Station service. After closing Oban down, he brought out a diary which was sealed with sticky ticker tape - the type of tape which used to form the content of telegrams. This was the diary in which Bob has written down the GPK signals on 31st January 1953 and which had been sealed since that day. He slit the diary open and there was the record of the sad tale of GZMN.