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At the close of his remarks, he presented this motion:

‘That a committee of the shareholders be appointed to assist and advise the directors as to the best means for carrying out such measures as may be deemed necessary to improve the position of the company, either by amalgamation with the Anglo-American Telegraph Company, or by raising the necessary capital to redeem the existing charge of £125,000 per annum on the revenue of the Atlantic Telegraph Company, and to aid the board in consideration of other important matters.’

The motion was adopted unanimously and, on 10 January 1868, a prospectus was published in the Daily News for an issue of preferential capital in the amount of £1,300,000:

‘For the purpose of regaining possession of the Cables at present worked by the Anglo-American Telegraph Company’

These extracts from the prospectus provide more details:

‘The negotiations recently conducted by the Board, conjointly with the Committee of Shareholders appointed at the Extraordinary Meeting of December 2, with the object of effecting—in union with the Anglo-American Telegraph Company’s Board—a general amalgamation of all interests, thereby simplifying the management and securing economy and efficiency, have been unsuccessful.

‘These negotiations have, however, still further impressed the Board and the Committee with the great importance of united management, and they have therefore unanimously decided upon the immediate issue of a new preferential capital at 10 per cent. per annum, to enable the Atlantic Telegraph Company to recover possession and management of their two submarine cables.’

‘This will relieve the shareholders from a charge of £125,000 now payable in each year to the Anglo-American Company before the Atlantic Stock becomes entitled to interest of any kind.

No allotment will be made, and all moneys received on applications will be returned, if the Board are unsuccessful in raising the amount necessary to extinguish the rights and privileges of the Anglo-American Telegraph Company.’

The closing date for applications was 28 January 1868, but in the interim, further negotiations with Anglo-American again failed to result in an agreement. This left the Atlantic Telegraph Co in a difficult position, and on 15 February, this news was published in the New York Journal of the Telegraph:

‘It appears that the scheme to buy out the Anglo-American Company has not been successful. At a meeting held in London, January 24, Mr. Wortley, chairman of an extraordinary meeting of the Atlantic Telegraph Company, complained of the Anglo-American Company as having obstructed the project and endangered its success. A new meeting was called for further consultation, on some day during the present month.’

Four days later Anglo-American’s Chairman, Charles Stewart, collapsed and died in the company offices in Old Broad Street, and the shareholders elected John Pender to replace him. At that time Pender was still Chairman of Telcon, but in order to take up the role he stood down in favour of Daniel Gooch while still retaining his equity stake in Telcon. Later that year Pender would start building his cable to India, known as the Red Sea Line (Issue 111 March 2020) that would become the foundation of the Eastern Telegraph Company.

On 16 March 1868, another extraordinary meeting was held to again consider the raising of £1,300,000 of new capital. However, there had been dissent among the ranks of the company’s shareholders, and Stuart-Wortley had to advise the meeting that some shareholders had taken the extreme measure of having an Act of Parliament passed that would prohibit the Atlantic Telegraph Co from making an offering to raise capital without a 75% affirmative vote. He also reported that these shareholders had subdivided their holdings, creating such a large number of small votes that it would be impossible for the board to reach the threshold. While there is no documentary evidence to prove it, this sounds very similar to a tactic that Pender later used in his fight for control of the Direct United States Cable Co in 1877.

Given this, the Chairman told the meeting that he believed the only course now open to them was to accept counterproposals made by Anglo-American for the joint working of the two companies.

As Stuart-Wortley’s physical condition continued to worsen, A Scrap Screen (Alice Buchan’s 1979 family memoirs), records the decision to give up Upper Sheen House and move his family back to Central London, in April that year, as follows:

‘…as the two girls were growing up, and the boys had to be educated, something in the way of a London home for them had to be contrived. The house they chose, No. 16 St James Place,…’

On 29 May 1868, a contract was signed setting out an agreement between the Atlantic Telegraph Co and Anglo-American, in which each company retained its own board, but the management was remitted to a joint committee formed from the two boards.

By this stage Stuart-Wortley was clearly struggling to carry out his duties as Chairman, and further bouts of incapacity followed. On 6 July 1868, Curtis Lampson wrote to his wife, Jane:

‘I hesitated for a long time about troubling Mr Wortley in his present feeble state of health with my letter of resignation but I did not feel like writing to any one else on the subject & I was anxious that he should at this time keep up his connection with the Company as Chairman by transmitting my letter of resignation.

I do hope and expect that his health will so improve as to enable him to go into the City at no distant period – the work will now be simple & easy, indeed his presence at the office will not often be required if he should not desire to go – I fancy that Mr Grimston will be made deputy chairman & if Mr Wortley is well enough to see him he would no doubt at my suggestion go out to Sheen?

My Wife has reported your observations about the Knighthood your views are in accordance with mine & I do not think it desirable at this time to trouble Mr Wortley about this matter –‘

At the age of 62 Lampson had decided to retire, and was indicating to his Chairman that Robert Grimston, who had finally agreed to join the Board, was willing to replace him. Once again there is a reference to the knighthood that Stuart-Wortley refused in 1866.

There were no further public meetings reported in 1868, but on 20 March 1869 an ordinary general meeting was held at the offices of the company with Stuart-Wortley in the chair. This was to be the last meeting he ever attended; he closed it with this advice to the shareholders, and the meeting was then adjourned until 2 July. The record shows that:

‘He advocated an amalgamation between this and the Anglo-American Company. It would, in his opinion, contribute largely to the prosperity of both Companies.’

It would appear that around this time Stuart-Wortley accepted the inevitable, as A Scratch Screen continues:

‘At last, somewhere about 1869, all efforts to stand and walk and be as other men, were relinquished, and from that moment the clouds seemed to lift. He suffered less, he took up as it were a new life within narrow limitations, and his natural bravery and serenity of mind made for years the sunshine of our home.’

The adjourned meeting re-convened on 2 July 1869. In his opening remarks, the Chairman, now L.M. Rate rather than Stuart-Wortley, explained that:

‘he took the place of the Hon. James Stuart Wortley on account of that gentleman’s illness necessitating his withdrawal from all active pursuits at present, but it would be a source of satisfaction to the shareholders to learn that the hon. gentleman would still remain a member of the board.’

Bradshaw’s 1869 Shareholders’ Guide in its entry for Anglo-American lists the members of the Joint Committee which was then managing the two companies. These were Richard Glass from Anglo-American and Stuart-Wortley from the Atlantic Telegraph Co, together with four others drawn from both companies: Robert Grimston, F.A. Bevan, Captain James Gilbert Johnston, and J.C. Pickersgill-Cunliffe.

At a special general meeting of Anglo-American on 31 January 1870, a resolution was passed 19 to 12:

‘approving an agreement between the Anglo-American Telegraph Company (Limited) and the Atlantic Telegraph Company for varying the articles of [the May 1868] contract between those Companies.’

A few days later, on 3 February 1870, the very last annual meeting of the Atlantic Telegraph Co was held at the London Tavern, with L.M. Rate in the chair. The last order of business was a resolution to approve and adopt:

‘...the agreement between the Anglo-American Telegraph Company and the Atlantic Telegraph Company, varying the articles of contract between the two Companies, dated the 29th of May, 1868, authorising the Directors to introduce a bill into Parliament to sanction the conversion of the stocks of the Atlantic Company into stocks of the Anglo-American Company at the rates agreed upon, and for the transfer of the property of the former to the latter Company, and authorising the Directors to carry into effect the foregoing resolutions.’

Finally, at a meeting of Anglo-American on 3 May 1870, with Captain A.T. Hamilton in the chair, the new chain of command was made clear, the only vestige of the Atlantic Telegraph Co being the appointment of two of its former directors to the Anglo-American board:

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‘According to the provisions of the contract between the Anglo-American and Atlantic Telegraph Companies, the powers of the joint committee ceased and determined on the 25th February, since which date the Company’s business has been carried on by the Directors of the Anglo-American Company; two Directors of the Atlantic Telegraph Company, the Hon. Robert Grimston and L.M. Rate, Esq., having been elected members of the board of this Company.’

This, then, was the end of the company which James Stuart-Wortley had worked so hard to bring back from the brink of disaster after the failure of the 1858 Atlantic cable, and it coincided with the beginning of the final decline in his own health. From the family’s return to London in May 1868 he had required the use of a wheelchair, a “bath chair” in the terminology of the time, although he still maintained a lively interest in politics and current affairs.

There is little mention of him in the press over the next decade, although we do have this photo of him from the family’s archive:

In March 1872, James and his wife were in Bruges, where he was ‘in but indifferent health’. From there they were leaving for Dusseldorf. In May 1874 he again became politically active for a time, serving as president of a private committee formed by two sitting MPs to promote the preservation of the jurisdiction of the House of Lords as a court of final appeal. Several meetings were held over the next twelve months, including some at his home.

He appears to have remained on good terms with John Pender, because he, Jane and his two daughters are recorded in the Visitors Book for 18 Arlington Street every May from 1876 to 1880. From 1877 they had moved to 5 Mandeville Place off Manchester Square in London. The timing of these visits to Arlington Street coincided with the opening of Royal Society of Arts Summer exhibitions. The Penders were

major patrons of the RSA and Emma used to host an annual Academy dinner for the great and good during the week the exhibitions opened. These dinners had proved so popular that they had expanded from a single event to three consecutive nights, to which, as well as artists, writers, academics and politicians were invited. The queue of coaches arriving at the doorstep stretched back past Devonshire House in Piccadilly, and it took them over an hour to get into the courtyard at 18 Arlington Street. It is likely that the Stuart-Wortleys were guests at these dinners.

No further news of him can be found in the newspaper archives until

James Stuart-Wortley in his Bath Chair the notice of his final illness in early August 1881.

James Stuart-Wortley died at age 76 on 22 August 1881, at Belton House in Grantham, now owned by the National Trust. He and Jane had been visiting Henry Francis Cockayne-Cust (1819-84), who had been a Captain in the Hussars and the Conservative MP for Grantham between 1874 and 1880. The will of the Right Honourable James Stuart-Wortley was proved in London, on 21 December 1881. He left a personal estate of £8,394 17s 9d and his two sons, Archibald John Stuart-Wortley (1849-1905) and Charles Beilby Stuart-Wortley (1851-1926), were appointed his executors.

James Stuart-Wortley was laid to rest in the family plot in the churchyard of St Leonard at Wortley in South Yorkshire.

The day after James Stuart-Wortley’s death, his home-town newspaper, The Sheffield Daily Telegraph, published an obituary with a detailed account of his life, which included this description of his last years: ‘For the last ten or twelve years, Mr Stuart Wortley has not had the use of his limbs, and during that time he has lived the life of an invalid, though taking a keen interest in public affairs until nearly the close of his existence. His was a wellknown figure in the west end of London, as he was wheeled about in his bath chair, but though thus cut off, in a sense, from the ordinary ways of the men of mark to whom he belonged, his interest in the affairs of the nation, in which during the prime of his years he had played a distinguished part, was not abated by his ill-health. Up to very recently he read

Gatehouse to the Courtyard at 18 Arlington Street

his Times regularly in the morning, and with all the carefulness of a man who felt that as he could not mingle with the crowd of workers, it was the more important he should keep himself fully informed of all that was passing in the busy world about him. Not many days before his demise one of the questions he put to his son, our respected Junior Member, was an inquiry as to whether the Lords and Commons had arrived at an agreement on the Land Bill. So hard is it for the man who has borne his part in the battle to forget others on whom the duty has fallen!’

In this long and detailed obituary, there is only a single sentence on his work with the Atlantic Telegraph Co:

‘He was chairman of the first Atlantic Cable Company in 1863—the company, it will be remembered, which “lost” its cable, and had ships engaged “grappling” till it was successfully picked up and safely laid.’

With three factual errors in its 35 words, it appears that this is all the paper’s editors could find to say about James Stuart-Wortley’s significant contributions to submarine telegraphy, so there is little wonder, when it comes to our industry, that he is the man that history forgot! STF

BILL BURNS is an English electronics engineer who worked for the BBC in London after graduation before moving to New York in 1971. There he spent a number of years in the high-end audio industry, during which time he wrote many audio, video, and computer equipment reviews, along with magazine articles on subjects as diverse as electronic music instruments and the history of computing. His research for these articles led to a general interest in early technology, and in the 1980s he began collecting instruments and artifacts from the fields of electricity and communications.

In 1994 a chance find of a section of the 1857 Atlantic cable inspired a special interest in undersea cable history, and soon after he set up the first version of the Atlantic Cable website <https://atlantic-cable. com>, which now has over a thousand pages on all aspect of undersea communications from 1850 until the present.

Bill’s interest in cable history has taken him to all of the surviving telegraph cable stations around the world, and to archives and museums in North America and Europe. He has presented papers on subsea cable history at a number of conferences, and in 2008 he instigated and helped organize the 150th Anniversary Celebration for the 1858 Atlantic cable at the New-York Historical Society. Most recently, in 2016 he was involved with the celebrations in London, Ireland and Newfoundland to mark the 150th anniversary of the 1866 Atlantic cable.

Since graduating in 1970, STEWART ASH has spent his entire career in the submarine cable industry. He joined STC Submarine Systems as a development engineer, working on coaxial transmission equipment and submarine repeater design. He then transferred onto field engineering, installing coaxial submarine cable systems around the world, attaining the role of Shipboard Installation Manager. In 1986, he set up a new installation division to install fibre optic submarine systems. In 1993, he joined Cable & Wireless Marine, as a business development manager and then move to an account director role responsible for, among others the parent company, C&W. When Cable & Wireless Marine became Global Marine Systems Ltd in 1999, he became General Manager of the engineering division, responsible for system testing, jointing technology and ROV operation. As part of this role he was chairman of the UJ Consortium. He left Global Marine in 2005 to become an independent consultant, assisting system purchasers and owners in all aspects of system procurement, operations, maintenance and repair. Stewart’s interest in the history of submarine cables began in 2000, when he project managed a celebration of the 150th anniversary of the submarine cable industry. As part of this project he co-authored and edited From Elektron to ‘e’ Commerce. Since then he has written and lectured extensively on the history of the submarine cable industry. From March 2009 to November 2015 he wrote Back Reflection articles for SubTel Forum. In 2013 he was invited to contribute the opening chapter to Submarine Cables: The Handbook of Law and Policy, which covered the early development of the submarine cable industry. To support the campaign to save Enderby House—a Grade II listed building— from demolition, in 2015 he wrote two books about the history of the Telcon site at Enderby Wharf on the Greenwich Peninsula in London. The first was The Story of Subsea Telecommunications and its Association with Enderby House, and the second was The Eponymous Enderby’s of Greenwich. His biography of Sir John Pender GCMG The Cable King was published by Amazon in April 2018.

James Stuart-Wortley’s Gravestone

Footnote The authors would like to take this opportunity to thank James Stuart-Wortley’s great-great-granddaughter, Caroline Oldridge, for making available to us this unique collection of correspondence and allowing us to publish extracts from the text that relate to her ancestor. Because of this, over the last five issues of the Forum, we have been able to tell the story of this remarkable man and his significant contribution to the ultimate success of the Atlantic Telegraph. We think it is safe to say that his role in keeping the dream alive, after the 1858 failure, was as significant as that of the much-heralded Cyrus W Field, and his contribution has now been properly recorded. Caroline and her family were unaware of James Stuart-Wortley’s role in the founding of our industry, so we are pleased to report that having read our tale, they have decided to donate this collection to the Museum of Global Communications | PK Porthcurno Cornwall, where the documents will be available for future researchers to review.