15 minute read
BACK REFLECTION
BY PHILIP PILGRIM
The story of the Atlantic Cable has been told over and over throughout history in countless books, newspapers, articles, and memoirs. The projector, Cyrus Field, and his cable ship, the Great Eastern, are somewhat “household names”, and famously held in high esteem for their many successes. As with most stories, there are often hidden figures, hidden achievements, and hidden sacrifices that should be brought into the light. For example, few know that there were three significant early Atlantic Cables: 1) the short-lived 1858 cable, 2) the nearly-laid 1865 cable, and 3) the successful 1866 cable. However, the “first” 1858 cable was usurped by the 1866 cable. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has granted World Heritage recognition to the 1866 landing site in Heart’s Content, Newfoundland, Canada but not to the 1858 landing site just up the bay in Sunnyside. Careful wording is used to trick laypeople that the Heart’s Content site is the first cable. Fortunately, my good friends Roger Snook and Gerard Lynch, are preserving the archeological remains of the first cable station in North America, located in Sunnyside.
Can you please treat this like a foot note or similar? I’ll cast a net to my friends at Google and Facebook that, if you want to give back to this industry’s history, please contact any of us to discuss.So, you are wanting to read about a cable ship and this author has just digressed into casting stones at the UN, and begging for archeological funding? The point to be made is that, just as the first 1858 cable has been eclipsed through time, there are even earlier cables, cable ships, and their projectors who started the wheels in
motion. These are dearly overlooked in history and this article will hopefully correct this deficit.
Let’s continue to ignore the article’s title and go back further in time to develop the story. On August 28th, 1850 the first submarine cable deployed by a ship was laid from Dover, England to Calais, France. The cable ship was the Goliath, and the projectors were brothers Jacob Brett and John Watkins Brett of London, England.
Oops, that was a false start, let’s go back even further to 1847 when a young English emigrant to Canada decided to take up the trendy new profession of telegraphy. This lad would be the great Frederick Newton Gisborne. Now let’s look again at that name: Gisborne is part of the first North American cable ship’s name. Newton is in fact a nod to the Newton, Sir
Isaac, who Gisborne descended from on his mother’s side. Gisborne started his life-long telecommunication journey at age 23 with his brother Hartley.
They studied in Montreal under the guidance of a pupil of Samuel
Morse. Gisborne was immediately hired by the Montreal
Telegraph Company who had built the line from Toronto to
Montreal; and were continuing construction eastward. Gisborne led the endeavor to build the line from Montreal, to Quebec, then further to the province of New Brunswick however, his efforts to convince the Government of New Brunswick to extend the route through it were in vain. In 1848, they were more interested in connecting to the US rather than to Upper Canada. For completeness, Gisborne also visited Nova Scotia to likewise, try to convince the Govt. to connect to Quebec. They too were more interested in connecting to the United States. It was clear
1854-Dec 11 back to work after refit
A Later Example of a Schooner Rigged Steamer Yacht Similar in Size to the Ellen Gisborne
that a route to Quebec was not in the cards. In 1849 Nova Scotia recruited Gisborne to lead their first telegraph build, he then accepted the position of Superintendent of its construction in 1849 and then became Superintendent of the lines and Chief operator.
It was in 1849 in Nova Scotia that Gisborne first witnessed the beauty and business of “International Telecommunications”. That year, while Gisborne constructed the first telegraph line out of the port of Halifax, the first Pony Express in North America carried European news from Halifax, then across Nova Scotia to Annapolis Royal, then by boat across the Bay of Fundy to Saint John, New Brunswick (then the terminus of the telegraph line from New York City). The news was then telegraphed to NYC. International news agencies and businesses paid for this service. Speed and efficiency were the priority. (Note the link connecting Portland, Maine and Boston, Massachusetts was by train well into the year of 1850).
It should be clear to the reader that Gisborne witnessed the first International Network (Internet) where news “packet” services were in play and low latency was to be challenged.
From a biography of Gisborne: “Gisborne, who was the telegraph operator at Halifax, on 15 November 1849, sent the first message over the newly completed electric telegraph line between Halifax and Saint John, carrying fresh news brought from Europe by the Cunard Line for New York, which forever ended the Nova Scotia Pony Express.”
Let’s put the final piece in the puzzle: Gisborne is in Halifax in 1850, participating in the translation and re-transmission of newspaper “data” between London and NYC. It arrives by vessel. He has made acquaintances with a fellow Haligonian, Samuel Cunard, owner of the transatlantic steamship services (and largest passenger service in the world at that time) and sees the importance of faster ships. He also participated in the electric telegraph replacing slower technology and witnessed the improvement of transmission speed by extending the terminus of the NYC telegraph line from Saint John to Halifax. He now has all the inputs to deduce that extending the telegraph line further east would shorten the ship’s travel distance and improve transmission rates. Yes, the NYC-LON network could benefit from an “upgrade”.
Then, out of the blue, telegraphic engineering news of the first submarine cable between England and France arrives in Halifax for translation and transmission to NYC in September 1850. Surely this news would have quickly reached Gisborne though professional colleagues or perhaps, firsthand in a European paper to be translated and transmitted. This detail is lost in history however, we do know that in 1850, Gisborne departs for Canada’s eastern most island of Newfoundland with an idea: To extend the telegraph line further east of Halifax and remove 2 days of steamship latency from the NYC-LON path.
I will skip the details of the next two years and save for future articles but for sure there is danger, adventure, suspense, exploration in the wilds, wheeling and dealing, fund raising, monopolies, death, international cable route planning optimizations, and double-crossing for poor Gisborne. Then things get even worse. The important part is that the Brett brothers finally have the first successful cable operating between England and France in September 1851 and Gisborne visits with them shortly after to learn the ropes and initiate his own submarine cable build in Canada.
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OK. We are at the half-way point of this article so I guess I should finally get on topic: the cable ship.
Nope, one more digression: Many compare the effort to build a transatlantic cable in 1858 to that of the Moon missions of the 1960’s. It was a huge and costly project, spanning a decade, that changed the path of civilization. Here we have a guy in Halifax, Canada who reads about a brand-new technology on the other side of the Atlantic, then says, “I’ll have me one of those.” and does! I am sensing Newton but he may also have Elon Musk genes!
Gisborne was able to order the submarine cable in early 1852 from the Brett Brothers. Two other cables built in 1852 failed (Wales-Ireland and Scotland-Ireland). Would the third time be lucky? Gisborne also designed and patented a telegraph insulator in this time, while realizing that he needed a cable ship to lay the cable; and our story begins.
Researching the cable ship Ellen Gisborne has been both fascinating and frustrating. In fact, my lovely wife Janet laughed when I said it was easier to find old cables on a beach than to find information on this ship. She then reminded me that she always found the cables first. Calls to many museums in North America, including the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic, here in Halifax, yielded no tangible results. Not even a painting or “similar facsimile”. What follows is information pulled from old newspapers, passenger records, and digitized books that paint a picture of the life of this vessel.
The Ellen Gisborne, named after Gisborne’s wife (see inset) was built in a Philadelphia shipyard in 1852. She was a steam yacht with a 50-horsepower engine driving a screw propeller. Newspapers show the Ellen Gisborne departed Philadelphia on October 8th, 1852 under the command of Captain Norgrave. She steamed to Holmes Hole (today known as Vineyard Haven), Massachusetts then departed on October 12th. She arrived 42 hours later in Halifax, Nova Scotia, on October 14th.
Passenger records show the crew that ferried the ship to Halifax, returned to the USA on the steamship Sir John Harvey (Halifax-Boston) on October 27th. The record shows Captain Norgrave, his first officer, and 3 seamen. Perhaps they enjoyed themselves in Halifax for two weeks or perhaps they provided some hand-over training to Gisborne and his team.
The R. S. Newall & Company of London supplied the submarine cable. It arrived in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island on September 29th via the transport ship Henrietta and awaited loading.
Records show that Gisborne sailed into Pictou, Nova Scotia on November 4th so, he would have had three weeks to learn the ropes and sail around Nova Scotia to reach the cable lay area in the Northumberland strait. The cable ship is reported to be in Charlottetown on Saturday, November 6th with Gisborne giving a conference. He then departs to further inspect the cable landing sites.
The next reports are on Friday, November 12th when the Ellen Gisborne, towing the Brigantine Eliza, loaded with cable, departs Charlottetown for the cable ground. The two vessels then return battered and bruised on Sunday, November 14th after grounding on a reef off New Brunswick, a reef that fishermen still curse today.
Sadly, for Gisborne, the local paper in Charlottetown was, on the same day, reporting his submarine cable efforts as well as reporting failed attempts of the Scotland-Ireland submarine cable also taking place. (the news arriving via the same telegraph system that he was advancing).
Gisborne makes repairs to his vessels and sets out for a second attempt on Friday, November 19th. This time he is successful, and the first cable lay in North America is completed on Monday, November 22, 1852, in a snowstorm. Gotta love Canada eh? The cable is 12 miles in length and connects Amherst Head, Prince Edward Island to Money Point, New Brunswick. (I will provide more details on this system in a future article, including an interview with Mr. George Read of PEI. His family owned the farmland where the cable landed, and he recalls seeing the excess cable coiled in the field. Perhaps this was the first Cable Depot in North America?)
Gisborne returns victorious to Charlottetown on Wednesday, November 24th. Not resting on his laurels, Gisborne soon steams to St. John’s, Newfoundland where the Ellen Gisborne will winter. He arrives on Wednesday, December 8th after a three-day voyage.
In April 1853, the Newfoundland Government leases the Ellen Gisborne for two months to monitor and enforce fishing regulations. During this time, Gisborne secured exclusive cable landing rights and support of the Newfoundland Govt. to build a telegraph system from eastern Newfoundland to connect to NYC via a future 150-mile second submarine cable to PEI from Newfoundland. The successful proof
Type: Steam Yacht (Schooner Rigged) Registry: 33955 Build Date: 1852 Shipyard: Philadelphia Tonnage: 39 (Gross.) Length: TBD Width: TBD Engine: 50HP Steam Propulsion: Screw Propeller /Sail Construction: Wood Captains: William Dyer 18531032 James Kelly 1853095 Thomas Pitt 1855044 Joseph Pynn
ALIDA ELLEN GISBORNE (STARR) Born: Sept. 10, 1834 Died: Jan. 4, 1854 Children: Guy (1852) Ellen Bertha (1853) Place of Birth: Halifax, N.S. Place of Death: Charlottetown, PEI Burial Plot: Charlottetown, PEI Points of Interest: Ellen’s Creek
of concept 12-mile cable, just laid, was enough to convince the government of the technology boom about to happen. Newfoundland was the gateway to North America and telecommunications with Europe was proven to be profitable. For additional, and much needed funding, Gisborne then travelled to NYC to find investors. He formed a company with two gentlemen, Horace B. Tibbetts, and Darius B. Holbrook.
In June, a terrestrial build across the wilds of Newfoundland is started by Gisborne. His clever idea is to take advantage of the challenging geography and run the pole lines between the heads of the long deep harbours of southern Newfoundland. Ships could easily bring men and supplies (poles, wires, insulators, provisions, and tools) to these locations. It is reported on June 2, 1853 that the Ellen Gisborne and another vessel are ferrying 260 men to the location of the first transatlantic cable station (what is now Sunnyside) to start the terrestrial build westward towards Nova Scotia. He chose this location, 4 years before the cable station was built.
By September of 1853, the two NYC backers failed to honour their debts leaving Gisborne in the lurch and hundreds of unpaid labourers. This story has a happy ending due to Gisborne’s gallant efforts but, at this point in time, he is very unpopular. Despite this, he honours the debts and vows to repay the good people of Newfoundland. His first step is to liquidate all assets, including the cable ship Ellen Gisborne.
The cable ship goes on auction on Wednesday October 5th, 1853 in St. John’s Newfoundland and is sold. The purchase payment soon becomes an issue that is escalated in the newspapers on October 26th. The Bank of British North America, an intermediary handling the transfer of payment, had claimed some of the payment and did not transfer the full amount to the seller. This hold up seems to extend well past December as the purchaser places ads in the local papers that the Ellen Gisborne will soon be providing passage and mail services between ports in eastern Newfoundland.
A local famine in Brigus, Newfoundland is reported in the papers in February. The Ellen Gisborne is dispatched with food to assist. This is its first report of regular duties.
In April of 1854, the Ellen Gisborne is finally providing a passenger and mail service between St. John’s, Harbour Grace, Brigus, Carbonear, and Portugal Cove. On May 18, 1854, the papers report the ship to be out of service for 3 days for repairs.
One month later she is again taken
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out of service for repairs and remains out of service until November 30th, 1854.
The ship is an enigma as newspapers in Boston reported on December 9th, 1854 that the ship had sunk returning to St. John’s after repairs in Boston. The papers in St. John’s on December 11th report the ship to “been thoroughly refitted and enlarged” and is back in service.
On August 13, 1855, the Ellen Gisborne is reported to have carried “His Excellency, Governor Darling to a ball in St. John’s where there was “a dazzling display of rank, beauty, and fashion”.
Captain Thomas Pitt resigns on September 17, 1856. This correlates with new ownership of the vessel by a Mr. George Mackinson.
By February 1859, the ship, and its condition are debated in government by some members. There is even a comparison to the machinery on recovered sunken vessel being in better working order.
In August of 1861, the condition of the vessel is contended in the papers where the owner, Mr. George Mackinson assures the public that the boilers are “perfectly good”; but he then ads that “new boilers are ordered”. One gets the feeling he is overly thrifty.
The Ellen Gisborne comes to the rescue on January 12, 1862. The Newfoundland tradition of “mummering”, carried over from Ireland and England, has people in disguise visiting neighbours on “Old Christmas”. In this instance, it is reported that a group of Catholics in costume started skirmishes with Protestants. Fist fights and even firearms discharging occurred. The army was called in to quell the riot and the Ellen Gisborne was used as their transport.
In March of 1862, we again see debates in parliament for the petitioning of Mr. George Mackinson to replace the Gisborne due to 6 accidents in the past 4 years. These debates continue off and on well into 1865 however, the Ellen Gisborne continues to chug along doing her job.
It is in her final years that the Ellen Gisborne is reported to do something most remarkable. In May 1865, the Gisborne carries the carcass of a Walrus, 11 feet in length and 14 feet in girth from Bay Roberts. It is reported to have been purchased by the French Consul for the Paris Museum. The report also goes on to say that at the same time of having a Walrus onboard, the Gisborne also towed a Brigantine called Walrus, from Carbonear. Perhaps the flow of Screech* led to this potential journalistic mix-up? Goo goo g’joob! Yes, today one can view taxidermized Walruses on display at the Muséum national d’histoire naturelle in Paris, but I have been unable to confirm their origin.
I was unable to find details of the final demise of the Ellen Gisborne however, naval records show that she was “stranded” on June 20th, 1870. Stranded is a naval term for running aground.
The final reference to the Ellen Gisborne is in a newspaper editorial from 1900 making fun of the stingy owner, Mr. George Mackinson. It stated that they thought he killed himself tying to us a capstan to raise the Ellen Gisborne. The device apparently failed and sent him flying. Perhaps her ladyship was an enigma doing good whenever possible. STF
Muséum national d'histoire naturelle in Paris
PHILIP PILGRIM is the Subsea Business Development Leader for Nokia's North American Region. 2021 marks his is 30th year working in the subsea sector. His hobbies include "Subsea Archaeology" and locating the long lost subsea cable and telegraph routes (and infrastructure). Philip is based in Nova Scotia, Canada.
