TransAtlantic Cables

It would be heart warming to write that the the first transatlantic cable between Europe and north America landed at Heart’s Content on the Bay de Verde Peninsula, in Newfoundland. Unfortunately, it wasn’t, as described below. Despite this, Heart’s Content is world famous for the second trans-Atlantic telegraph cable, one laid between Heart’s Content and Valentia, Ireland. It was this cable that lead to the establishment of the Heart’s Content Cable Station.

Today’s weblog post is less about our visit to Newfoundland, and Heart’s Content, than it is about the history of connecting two continents with communication cables.

Preface

It is difficult to state, with any degree of precision, the person and date for the invention of the telegraph. There are just too many things and people involved, including an electrochemical telegraph invented by Samuel Thomas von Sömmerring (1755 – 1830) in 1809. He also worked with undersea communication cables in 1811, when he and Pavel Schilling (1786–1837) made a trial with a wire cable which was sheathed in rubber, in Munich.

Samual Morse (1791 – 1872) gets credited with the invention not only of the machinery used, known as the one wire telegraph, from 1837, but for the code used to transmit messages. There inventions competed with others, such as one by William Fothergill Cooke (1806 – 1879) and Charles Wheatstone (1802 – 1875) who invented and patented a needle telegraph in 1837. The receiver consisted of a number of needles that could be moved by electromagnetic coils to point to letters on a board. This feature was appreciated by early users who were unwilling to learn codes, and employers who did not want to invest in staff training. In 1838 they installed the first commercial telegraph, on the Great Western Railway, running 21 km from Paddington station to West Drayton. It was a five-needle, six-wire system. It was far too complex to be reliable.

In 1838 William O’Shaughnessy (1809 – 1889) lay an underwater cable across the River Hooghly at Calcutta. He covered his wire with pitch, then enclosed it within a split cane and wrapped tarred yarn around the outside. Charles Wheatstone later and independently developed a similar system.

In 1842 Samuel Morse transmitted an electric current under New York Harbour. The wire was insulated with tarred hemp and an outer sheathing of rubber. In 1845, Ezra Cornell (1807 – 1874) lay two copper wires, enclosed in cotton and insulated with rubber, then placed in a lead pipe, across the Hudson River between New York and Fort Lee. It worked initially, but was damaged beyond repair by drifting ice in 1846. Also in 1846, Charles Samual West (1809 – ca. 1889) succeeded in transmitting telegraph messages to a ship in Portsmouth Harbour, England, through a rubber insulated wire. In 1842, Samuel Morse lay an underwater cable in New York Harbor and succeeded in sending messages across it. A few years later, Ezra Cornell placed a telegraph cable across the Hudson River from New York City to New Jersey.In 1842, Samuel Morse lay an underwater cable in New York Harbor and succeeded in sending messages across it. A few years later, Ezra Cornell placed a telegraph cable across the Hudson River from New York City to New Jersey.

In the late 1840s Werner von Siemens (1816 – 1892) invented a machine for applying gutta-percha (a type of rubber) to wire.

In 1850, 25 nautical miles (nm) = 46 km of cable from the Submarine Telegraph Company was lain from Dover to Calais. It soon failed, because it wasn’t armoured. The company then ordered, a new, larger cable with four insulated cores, that was armoured before laying. This cable became the first working oceanic submarine cable.

Heart’s Content & the Trans-Atlantic Telegraph Cable

Heart’s Content owes much of its reputation to the American businessman Cyrus Field (1819 – 1892) who in 1855 chose Trinity Bay as the terminus of his Transatlantic telegraph cable. Originally, the landing site was to be at Bay Bulls Arm, directly across Trinity Bay from Heart’s Content. It arrived there on 1858-08-05. However, due to a malfunction, its operation broke down after three weeks, and was terminated on 1858-10-20. On its first day of operation, Queen Victoria sent President James Buchanan the first message in Morse code.

On Friday, 1866-07-13, the Great Eastern left Valentia, Ireland with 2 730 nautical miles (nm) = 5 056 km of cable in her hold. On 1866-07-27, 1 852 nm = 3 430 km of this cable lay at the bottom of the Atlantic ocean, while the Great Eastern was anchored in Trinity Bay. The cable was laid at a rate of 5.5 nm/ hour = a speed of 5.5 knots = about 10 km/ hour.

This was the fifth attempt in twelve years to establish a transatlantic telegraphic link. Cyrus Field consulted with oceanographer Matthew Maury (1806 – 1873), about the feasibility of connecting Ireland with Newfoundland, and with Samuel Morse (1791 – 1872) about other aspects of its technical feasibility. Once those questions had been Field sought financial backing in New York from Chandler White (? – ?), Peter Cooper (1791 – 1883), Marshall Roberts (1813 – 1880) and Moses Taylor (1806 – 1882), founding with Cyrus and Dudley Field (1805 – 1894) the New York, Newfoundland, and London Telegraph Company. Submarine cables were laid between Cape Ray, Newfoundland, and Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, and then between Cape Breton Island and the Nova Scotia mainland. Thus,St. John’s, Newfoundland, and New York City were connected in 1855.

Field and nine associates then formed the American Telegraph Company (ATC). By mutual agreement with other telegraph companies, regional operating boundaries were established, with Newfoundland, Nova Scotia (?), New Brunswick, and the United States’ eastern seaboard became ATC’s territory.

The next several months were spent in establishing the Atlantic Telegraph Company, choosing the cable design, manufacturing the cable, finding backers, and securing support for the project from both the British and American governments. Note: It must be remembered that, at the time, Newfoundland was not part of Canada, but British territory.

Cable laying attempt 1: On 1857-08-05, the American steam frigate Niagara and the Royal Navy’s steamer Agamemnon left Valentia Bay, Ireland. Each held half-an- ocean’s length of cable. However, after laying about four hundred nm = 640 km, of cable the line snapped, and could not be recovered from the ocean floor.

Improvements were made to the machinery for laying the cable, a better insulating compound was developed, William Thomson invented a mirror galvanometer, used to detect cable signals, and still more capital was raised. The cable was stored on the docks at Plymouth, England. This was reloaded onto the Niagara and the Agamemnon.

Attempt 2: The ships left Valentia on 1858-06-10. Only 160 nm of cable were laid when it broke.

Attempt 3: Field pushed to try again immediately. The two ships met in mid Atlantic ocean on 1858-07-29, spliced the cable, then laid the cables in opposite directions. Both reached their respective ports in Newfoundland and Ireland on 1858-08-05. The cable was inoperable by 1858-09-18.

There was little interest in reviving the cable laying venture in either Britain or USA. The British Board of Trade set up a special commission to investigate submarine cables, that was active in 1859 and 1860. Members of the commission included Charles Wheatstone and Latimer Clark (1822 – 1898). They carried out experiments on the construction, insulating, testing, and laying of cables. Their conclusion was… a well-insulated cable, properly protected, of suitable specific gravity, made with care, and tested under water throughout its progress with the best known apparatus, and paid into the ocean with the most improved machinery, possesses every prospect of not only being successfully laid in the first instance, but may reasonably be relied upon to continue for many years in an efficient state for the transmission of signals.

By this time, the British government had lost interest in the cable project, and the United States was in a civil war. Despite this, in 1862 Glass, Elliott and Co. offered to make and lay the new cable and to put up $125,000 as well, in return for reimbursement of materials and labor costs, plus an additional 20% of the cost of the line. With this, Field found private investors in Britain and USA to raise the necessary capital, with London railroad entrepreneur Thomas Brassey (1805 – 1870) being critical, encouraging Manchester industrialist John Pender (1816 – 1896) and the Gutta Percha Company to form Telegraph Construction and Maintenance (TC&M) responsible for all aspects of the cable’s construction and the remaining necessary capital.

The SS Great Eastern was an iron sail-powered, paddle wheel and screw-propelled steamship designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806 – 1859), and built by John Scott Russell (1808 – 1882) & Company in London, but registered in Liverpool. It was in service from 1859 to 1889: length = 211 m, beam = 25 m, draft = 6.1 – 9.1 meters (load dependent), with a maximum displacement of 32 160 tons = 29.175 Gg, with a double hull and initially with sufficient coal bunkers giving it a range of about 11 000 km. Sources vary on how much this was later reduced, but it needed a range exceeding 4 000 nm = 7 500 km to cross the Atlantic. The Great Eastern captured the popular imagination as the largest ship afloat until the RMS Celtic (1901 – 1928). Because the Great Eastern had always lost money, she was auctioned in 1864-01, The purchaser was Daniel Gooch (1816 – 1889) who, with the financial help of Field and Brassey, bought the Great Eastern for $125 000. It had cost over $6 million to build. It was put at the disposal of the cable laying expedition. Note: The 1800s saw the GBP to USD exchange rate to be about GBP 1 = ca USD 5, except during periods of war. The GBP 1 was as low as USD 3.62 during the Napoleonic wars (1803 -1815), but as high as USD 10 during the US Civil war and its aftermath (1861 – 1875).

Attempt 4: On 1865-07-23, the Great Eastern lay cable manufactured according to higher technical specifications. Yet, the cable once again snapped and was lost only 1 000 km from Newfoundland. The improved methods of making and laying the cable were proven sound, and there was less skepticism about any next attempt failing.

Attempt 5: Capital was raised, the Anglo-American Telegraph Company formed, a new cable was constructed, the Great Eastern began laying cable on 1866-07-13 and on 1866-07-27, the cable was landed and began operating at Heart’s Content. The Great Eastern then returned to the location where the 1865 cable had been lost, retrieved it, spliced it, and paid out the remaining distance to Newfoundland. By 1866-09-08 two telegraph lines were sending messages across the Atlantic.

With it’s location on the east coast of Trinity Bay, Heart’s Content is better sheltered from storms, proving itself to be a good location for operating the trans-Atlantic cables. Two more cables were laid from Valentia to Heart’s Content in 1873 and 1874, then another two in 1880 and 1894.

Messages arriving at Heart’s Content, had to be sent onward to New York and elsewhere. Field also provided a cable from Newfoundland to Baddeck, Cape Breton Island, where a telegraph house was built in 1861 that contained the Trans-Oceanic Cable Company office.

In 1918 the cable station was enlarged to serve increased communication volume of the Anglo-American Telegraph Company’s successor, Western Union, that had taken over the business in 1912. The station lasted until 1965, when it closed. Much of the reason for this closure was the replacement of telegraph with telephone. In 1968, the cable building was bought by the Newfoundland Government as an historic site, to be transformed into a communications museum. On 1974–07-27, 108 years to the day, after the 1866 landing of the transatlantic cable at Heart’s Content, the museum officially opened. We visited the museum 50 years and 3 days later = 2024-07-30!

The Canadian and the Republic of Ireland governments want to create a transboundary World Heritage Site consisting of both the station at Heart’s Content and the station on Valentia Island. On 2022-12-20, Heart’s Content Cable Station and Valentia Cable Station were officially submitted to the UNESCO as a site entitled Transatlantic Cable Ensemble.

A reply from Tara Bishop, Site Supervisor at the museum: Generally all visitors are offered a guided your of the exhibit unless there is a time constraint that doesn’t allow ample time to do so.

Clarenville & TAT-1

The first radio-based transatlantic telephone call that began at 9:35 (New York time; 14:35 London time) on 2027-01-07 from the 26th floor of the AT&T building, 125 Broadway, New York City. It traveled over 5 000 km, via wire to a radio transmitter at Rocky Point, Long Island, New York State and then by radio waves to a radio receiving station at Rugby, England, then onward by wire to London. The return conversation went from London via wire to Cupar, Scotland, from there via radio waves to a receiving station at Houlton, Maine, and finally by wire back to New York City. This inaugurated In 1927 a 3 minute call cost £9 = ca US$45. The purchasing power of US$1 = US$18 in 2024, = US$ 810 for a 3 minute call. This system handled slightly more than 800 calls a day.

The main challenges with increasing traffic volume were technology related. Many advances came with developments during World War II. These included: coaxial cable, polyethylene insulation (replacing gutta-percha), reliable vacuum tubes for submerged repeaters and a general improvement in carrier equipment. Transistors were not considered since they were a recent invention with unknown longevity.

In North America, after a 1952 submarine telephone cable proved successful between Florida and Cuba, discussion emerged about a cable between North America and Europe in 1953, with the North American end ultimately proposed to be Clarenville.

The agreement to make the connection was announced on 1953-12-01. It was a joint project between the General Post Office of the UK, the American Telephone and Telegraph company, and the Canadian Overseas Telecommunications Corporation. The share split in the scheme was 40% British, 50% American, and 10% Canadian. The total cost was about US$ 330 million.

There were to be two main cables, one for each direction of transmission. Each cable was produced and laid in three sections, two shallow-water armored sections, and one continuous central section 1,500 nautical miles (2,800 km) long. The electronic repeaters were designed by the Bell Telephone Laboratories of the United States and they were inserted into the cable at 37-nautical-mile (69 km) intervals – a total of 51 repeaters in the central section.

Clarenville was a junction on the Newfoundland Railway, that operated from 1898–1949 when it was merged into the Canadian National Railway (CN), before it was abandoned in 1988. The junction resulted in a branch line to the Bonavista Peninsula, from the main line. The construction of the Trans-Canada Highway through the community, completed in 1965 helped it become a service centre for central-eastern Newfoundland, serving 96 000 people, in 90 communities within a 100 km radius. There are claims that about 70% of Newfoundland & Labrador’s population live within two hours of Clarenville.

TAT-1, the first submarine transatlantic telephone cable system, was laid between Clarenville and Kerrera, Oban, Scotland. Two cables were laid between 1955 and 1956 with one cable in each direction. It was inaugurated 1956-08-25. Each cable was able to carry 35 channels = simultaneous telephone calls. A 36th channel could carry up to 22 simultaneous telegraph messages.

At the land-end in Gallanach Bay near Oban, Scotland, the cable was connected to coaxial (and then 24-circuit carrier lines) carrying the transatlantic circuits via Glasgow and Inverness to the International Exchange at Faraday Building in London. On the other end, from Clarenville a terrestrial line carried signals about 100 km to Terranceville, where another 480 km long submarine cable crossed the Cabot Strait ending up in Sydney Mines, Nova Scotia. From there the communications traffic was routed to the US border by a microwave radio relay link, and in Brunswick, Maine the route joined the main US network and branched to Montreal to connect with the Canadian network.

In 2024, 35 simultaneous conversations is not impressive. Yet, I find the speed of cable-laying impressive, 6 knots = 11 km/h, despite it being just marginally faster than that of 1865 = ca. 10 km/h.

The cables were laid over the summers of 1955 and 1956, with the majority of the work done by the cable ship HMTS Monarch. At the land-end in Gallanach Bay near Oban, Scotland, the cable was connected to coaxial (and then 24-circuit carrier lines) carrying the transatlantic circuits via Glasgow and Inverness to the International Exchange at Faraday Building in London. At the cable landing point in Newfoundland the cable joined at Clarenville, then crossed the 300-mile (480 km) Cabot Strait by another submarine cable to Sydney Mines, Nova Scotia. From there the communications traffic was routed to the US border by a microwave radio relay link, and in Brunswick, Maine the route joined the main US network and branched to Montreal to connect with the Canadian network.

Opened on September 25, 1956, TAT-1 carried 588 London-US calls and 119 London-Canada calls in the first 24 hours of public service.

The original 36 channels were 4 kHz. The increase to 48 channels was accomplished by narrowing the bandwidth to 3 kHz. Later, an additional three channels were added by use of C Carrier equipment. Time-assignment speech interpolation (TASI) was implemented on the TAT-1 cable in June 1960 and effectively increased the cable’s speach capacity from 37 (out of 51 available channels) to 72.

TAT-1 carried the Moscow-Washington hotline between the American and Soviet heads of state, using a teleprinter to avoid misinterpretations. This link became operational on 1963-07-13, motivated by communication delays during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Other TAT cables were subsequently laid. TAT-1 was retired in 1978.

Back in Norway, I started to read Arthur C. Clarke’s (1917 – 2008) Voices Across the Sea (1974, 2nd edition). I am glad that it was not the first edition from 1958, because the second edition looks at the future of transoceanic communication, including the use of satellites. Fortunately, for the world, there is unexpected progress. In 2024 people read fewer books, but rely on websites.

For me, as a technologist, that includes sites with a focus on fibre cables, possibly without even mentioning satellites. My choice of a website is: https://atlantic-cable.com/ No, it is not just about transatlantic cables, but undersea communication, generally. Its subtitle is: History of the Atlantic Cable & Undersea Communications from the first submarine cable of 1850 to the worldwide fiber optic network.

Connections: In 2000, my wife, Trish, and I visited Field, British Columbia, home to about 170 souls in the Kicking Horse River valley within Yoho National Park. It is 1 256 m high, and 27 km west of Lake Louise on the Trans-Canada Highway. It was named for Cyrus West Field. The purpose of our visit was to visit the Burgess Shales, a fossil-bearing deposit noted for the exceptional preservation of the soft parts of its 508 million years old (middle Cambrian) fossils.

Newfoundland & Labrador Conclusions

This is the last of the series about Newfoundland & Labrador. At some future date, I hope to publish a weblog post with recommendations for visiting Newfoundland, especially for people with an interest in transportation and communication, including amateur radio operators.

At the end of the trip, Alasdair answered some questions. These are followed by my own answers.

Did I enjoy the trip to Newfoundland? Yes. / Yes.
Will I be back? I doubt it. / No.
Would I recommend it? Not really. / It is for people with specific interests.

Alasdair concludes: The problem is that although there are some very quaint and interesting things to see, they are hundreds of km from each other. Most of the other tourists we saw and met were seniors. Strikes me it’s a place to go when one has been everywhere else.