Qualla: Runnel Stone https://qualla.com/runnel-stone en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:10 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/g/b/g/u/runnel-stone-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Runnel Stone https://qualla.com/runnel-stone Runnel Stone: Introduction https://qualla.com/runnel-stone/ Photo credit Zeniris, CC BY-SA 4.0. Pilots flying the Cornish coast learn to look for two small painted cones on Gwennap Head. They sit on the cliff above Porthgwarra, one red, one black-and-white, and they appear to be hiking poles abandoned by a giant. They are nothing of the kind. They are aiming marks. A ship's master out at sea, watching from the deck, keeps the black-and-white cone in view at all times. If the red cone slides in front of it and obscures it completely, the ship is at that exact moment passing directly over the Runnel Stone, a granite pinnacle that lies a few feet below the surface and has killed over thirty steamships. The cones have been doing this job for two hundred years.

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Image: Zeniris | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/b/g/u/runnel-stone-wp/gbgu-runnel-stone-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Runnel Stone: The Stone That Used to Show https://qualla.com/runnel-stone/ Photo credit John Lucas, CC BY-SA 2.0. The Cornish name for the Runnel Stone means stone abounding in seals. Until 1923 it lived up to the description: a black knuckle of granite that appeared above the surface at low water and provided a basking platform for the local grey seal colony. In 1923 a steamship called the ...

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Image: John Lucas | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/b/g/u/runnel-stone-wp/gbgu-runnel-stone-the-stone-that-used-to-show.mp3 0:06 2 full Runnel Stone: The Cones https://qualla.com/runnel-stone/ Photo credit Jim Champion, CC BY-SA 3.0. Trinity House first put a marker on Gwennap Head in 1821, a bare wrought-iron pole that the sea carried away within a season. James Walker, the corporation's chief engineer, designed the replacement. Work began in 1841 and proved, in the surveyors' words, of great difficulty and ...

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Image: Jim Champion | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/b/g/u/runnel-stone-wp/gbgu-runnel-stone-the-cones.mp3 0:06 3 full Runnel Stone: The Bell and the Whistle https://qualla.com/runnel-stone/ Photo credit Richard Knights, CC BY-SA 2.0. A buoy has marked the position of the Runnel Stone since the 1870s. The most beloved version had three voices. A flashing light for the eye, a bell that rang as the buoy rocked, and a whistle set in a tube that emitted a long mournful note when there was a swell running. The whis...

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Image: Richard Knights | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/b/g/u/runnel-stone-wp/gbgu-runnel-stone-the-bell-and-the-whistle.mp3 0:06 4 full Runnel Stone: A Reserve Built on Wrecks https://qualla.com/runnel-stone/ Photo credit Jowaninpensans, CC BY-SA 4.0. On 29 January 2016 the area was designated the Runnel Stone Marine Conservation Zone, twenty square kilometres of reef, sandy seabed, and crumpled steamships protected from bottom trawling and aggregate dredging. The MCZ exists because the stone has been so thoroughly successful ...

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Image: Jowaninpensans | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/b/g/u/runnel-stone-wp/gbgu-runnel-stone-a-reserve-built-on-wrecks.mp3 0:06 5 full