Frank Strike Collection: Cornish shipwreck lantern slides

In November 2023, the attention of the Heritage Centre was caught by a BBC article highlighting a unique collection for sale at public auction; ‘hundreds’ of magic lantern slides.  The collection itself, gathered and curated by shipbuilder and local historian Frank Strike, features shipwrecks, rescues and salvage operations all conducted along Cornwall’s coastline from 1890s to 1960s.

Offering potentially exceptional insight into maritime technology, safety equipment and ship/yacht building, the Foundation decided to bid and was, thankfully, successful in winning the lot for a total of £15,000. Collected from the auction house at Penzance by the Centre’s Senior Archivist (in the boot of his lemon-yellow Vauxhall Corsa) the Lloyd’s Register Foundation officially took possession in December 2023. Since then, a full catalogue of the Frank Strike Collection has been completed and the extent of this fascinating addition to our archives can be fully known and made freely available to the public.

The Frank Strike Collection is also notable as the first magic lantern slides to enter the Foundation’s archive. Dating from the first half of the 17 th century, magic lanterns, sometimes known as lanterna magica, were a pioneering form of portable image projection that reached the height of its popularity in the 19 th century, declining only with the rise of cinema. Later becoming a fixture of public education, they were originally conceived as a form of entertainment typically enjoyed by the well-to-do and middle classes. They are perhaps most famously associated with the sensational rise of phantasmagoria or horror theatre that would give semi-transparent life to apparitions, skeletons, and other demonic forces that delighted and terrified the general public. They consist of a light source, i.e. a candle or electric bulb, one or sometimes multiple lenses and most importantly, transparent (usually glass) picture slides.

In addition to the lantern slides, the purchased collection also included spare projection bulbs and, crucially, the magic lantern itself, produced by J H Steward of London. Not only have we been able to confirm that the magic lantern is in good working order, but to Frank Strike’s credit, it has also been fitted with a modern UK three-pin adapted plug!

Across five boxes, the newly catalogued collection totals 341 glass magic lantern slides. The majority are believed to have been purchased from the notable Gibson family of photographers, based at Penzance. The other main source appears to have been Alfred Herbert Hawke of Helston, who supplied only photographs, from which Frank Strike produced slides of his own. Though research and cross referencing online shows that the National Maritime Museum holds prints of 48 of the collection’s slides, the rest are believed to be wholly uncopied. Together, they comprise the following series catalogued to item level:

• Maritime Collection/Shipwrecks (225 slides)
• Life-saving inventions (25 slides)
• Porthleven (69 slides)
• Breage (6 slides)
• Freedom of Helston (12 slides)
• Other (4 slides)

But who was Frank Strike? Born in 1895, Francis ‘Frank’ Edyvean Strike began his career as a shipwright, later becoming a builder and undertaker. In 1929 he would join the coastguard in his hometown of Porthleven where he would serve for more than forty years. In this capacity he held the Coastguard long service medal for 35 years as Number One in the life-saving team, where he was responsible for aiming and firing the small charge rockets that conveyed ropes to vessels in distress. It’s no small wonder that this rocket technology features heavily within the lantern slides of his collection. 

During the Second World War he would also serve as Patrol Leader of the Porthleven Patrol and can be seen in some of the heroic rescue efforts found within his collection. He would also be heavily involved with the salvage of historic Cornish wrecks, such the 44-gun frigate HMS Anson, wrecked in 1807 at Bar Sands. Having always held a keen interest in local and maritime history, Frank Strike started his slide collection in 1947 over a twenty-year period. From that time, the slides were to be used extensively for his regular series of public lectures, and in his own published books on Cornish shipwrecks. Frank Strike passed away in 1967; the collection passing to his son, John Strike. John continued to care for the collection, conducting his own lectures and digitising the slides until the decision was finally made in 2023 to put them up for sale at public auction.

Seen collectively, the slides offer tantalising glimpses of maritime communities reacting to technological changes that were impacting their lived relationship with the sea. They offer thought-provoking insight into the ever-present dangers of life at sea, as well as the legacy of sacrifice and service from ordinary working people, seaman and lifeboat crews. The next challenge for the team at the Heritage Centre is to promote awareness of and access to the Frank Strike Collection. Its uses extend to projects such as Project Tangeroa (Potentially Polluting Wrecks) as well as for wider academic research. In the original BBC article that sparked our purchase of the collection, John Strike is quoted as hoping that the slides would go to a ‘good home’ where they would be seen and enjoyed by as many people as possible. Now that they have been catalogued and can be publicly viewed in the Heritage Centre’s new reading rooms, it is our great pleasure to be able to fulfil Mr Strikes wishes, and to play a part in telling the story of this remarkable collection.