# Armistice is Signed.........



## david.hopcroft (Jun 29, 2005)

During the First World War, the Admiralty built a Radio Station on the West Pier at Grimsby Dock – call sign BYV - as part of HMS PEKIN, the Naval Base in the port. It consisted of three railway passenger carriages placed end to end. The main Radio equipment was a 2 Kilowatt Spark Transmitter of Naval design, and a Standard Post Office type receiver. 

On the Eleventh Hour of the Eleventh Day of the Eleventh month 1918, this Armistice Signal was transmitted at 1100 to the armed trawlers of the Humber Fishery Protection Section. The signal was signed off as sent at 1108 by SGR. Stanley G Roffey is the gentleman standing on the right of the group.

The signal was actually sent as a coded message using four letter code groups. Redundant groups with no meaning were included to confuse enemy code breakers. Considering the nature of the signal though, it seems strange that it was sent in code and not in plain language.

Stan Roffey was a Post Office employee who enrolled in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve. He was appointed to HMS PEKIN at Grimsby in early August 1918 as Ordinary Seaman (Wireless). He served both at sea and in the Radio Station on the West Pier.

The Radio Station was handed over to the Post Office for commercial use in 1920, and called Humber Radio - GKZ. When Direction Finding came along, the Adcock System aerials needed more space than was available on the West Pier, so a new site was sought. This was found at an electrically quiet location further down the coast at Trusthorpe, between Mablethorpe and Sutton on Sea. It opened on December 7th 1927 keeping the name Humber Radio. Stan Roffey moved to Mablethorpe with the new station, and was allocated a house in Alexander Road Mablethorpe for which he paid a rent of £25 per year, payable half-yearly.

Humber Radio finally closed 30th June 2000 when BT ceased its ship to shore operations.

David
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## Troppo (Feb 18, 2010)

That's great, thanks.


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## hawkey01 (Mar 15, 2006)

Good thread David thank you.

Neville - Hawkey01


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## david.hopcroft (Jun 29, 2005)

These are the two pages of the coded signal. 

You can clearly see the redundant groups, but considering the nature of the signal, can anyone suggest why it was sent in code ??

David
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## trotterdotpom (Apr 29, 2005)

It says in the message "no change to be made in organisation arrangements until further notice". Presumably that included radio telegraphy procedures, ie send messages in code.

John T


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## sparks69 (Dec 18, 2005)

I stayed on holiday in the 1950s (post floods) at the "Radio Bungalows" which were in the shadow of the aerials and were possibly very close to GKZ.
BBC Radio reception was crap all you picked up was b....y morse !
Maybe it was that early exposure to morse that made me want to go to sea ?
Years later, on a social visit to GKZ, they showed me the tide mark where the flood waters had got to on the transmitters.


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## Ron Dean (Aug 11, 2010)

I agree with others - a great post David!
Interesting that the armistice was signed in a railway carriage at Compiegne in Northern France, and that news of the signing was received in a railway carriage in Lincolnshire.
Unlike the Compiegne carriage, which is preserved for posterity, sadly I very much doubt that the one at Grimsby still exists.

Ron.


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## Graham P Powell (Jun 2, 2007)

Very interesting item David. Railways having been my passion since I was a small boy I would suspect the vehicles were wooden bodied , gas lit and possible of North Eastern, Great Central, Great Northern or Great Eastern origin.
I doubt very much any of them survived. Just a chance some were sold as bungalows but unlikely I would think. (If they had a generator for the TX then possibly they had electric lighting. The high death toll at Quintinshill was largely down to the gas lit, wooden body GCR coaches catching fire.
regards
Graham Powell


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## Tony Selman (Mar 8, 2006)

Excellent post David. Very interesting and something I have not read about before.


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## david.hopcroft (Jun 29, 2005)

sparks69 said:


> I stayed on holiday in the 1950s (post floods) at the "Radio Bungalows" which were in the shadow of the aerials and were possibly very close to GKZ.
> BBC Radio reception was crap all you picked up was b....y morse !
> Maybe it was that early exposure to morse that made me want to go to sea ?
> Years later, on a social visit to GKZ, they showed me the tide mark where the flood waters had got to on the transmitters.


Sparks69 - That was indeed GKZ. Do you remember this then ? It was the main WT and DSB RT transmitter that was cleaned up and lasted until SSB came around. We may even have met.

John T - Yes, you are probabloy right. I had not thought what that phrase meant.

I put together a few words and pictures for my local paper. I said that the signal was transmitted .........but the headline was 'Stan Recived the signal that ended the War' !! If they don't know they just make it up !!


David
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## chadburn (Jun 2, 2008)

There use to be a massive radio station on the right hand side of the road from Hull to Patrington, I visited the site many year's ago after it had shut down, most of the surface building's had been removed except the building above the underground reserve which I went into. The owner's of the place when I visited had photograph's of the transmitter's massive valve's it looked like something out of science fiction and the concrete block's for the mast(s) support wire's were still in the field's around the site.


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## towisuk (Jun 28, 2012)

Hi chadburn,
Here's some information regarding the station that you found at Ottringham............
regards
Tom

http://www.bbc.co.uk/humber/content/articles/2006/02/19/bbc_ottringham_feature.shtml


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## andysk (Jun 16, 2005)

What an interesting thread, thanks all & David ....


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## chadburn (Jun 2, 2008)

Thank's Tom, sorry I did not pick your reply up earlier, the large "Underground Reserve" room's below the Site were still in use by the above ground company for storage purposes when I visited the place and I presumed they had "bilge pump's" to keep the place dry. There is still a fair amount of interesting WW2 building's around the Patrington area and toward's the coast if you are interested in Radio and RADAR. You can understand why the area around Kingston-upon -Hull was bombed so much, not only for the Dock's but the high activity of radio transmission's emitting from around there.


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