BACK REFLECTION

very heavy tramp through deep swamp & over a desolately barren country. We were obliged to ford two considerable streams about 2½ feet deep the water which was bitterly cold. It will be a matter of difficulty to build good bridges over these streams as the ice rafts heavy in them.

Note. I could produce a model of a good & cheap bridge which I could guarantee for a reasonable consideration. I think one build upon my plan would cost 50 to 10 less than any other that could stand two spring freshets. It was an hour or two after dark before we reached Salmonier a distance of 17 miles. We travelled on the new road, or rather where the new road is to be for at present it is almost impassable for even a pedestrian.

DEC. 3RD.

Wind W & clear. At 6½ P.M. we reached Holyrood after a heavy walk of 22 miles thro the snow.

DEC. 4TH.

Fine weather wind W. a little after sundown we again entered St. Johns after an absence of 3 months & 4 days. During which time a great task was accomplished.

CONCLUSIONS:

Gisborne was accurate in his estimates for this survey duration. In Figure 5, we see that his estimate before the journey was two and a half months of walking. Even with the setbacks, he completed all but 15 miles in two and a half months.

The hardships and endurance of this survey team are sobering and heartwarming. Gisborne was a determined, skilled, and kind leader. Throughout the journey, he let his men take their leave if they wished and he also knew when to thin the team and work with only experienced travelers to make progress. With respect to the hardships of travel during the survey, we see the exact same hardships endured by the linesmen who would operate and repair the telegraph system that would be installed by 1856.

There are many references to this survey where claims of abandonment, deaths, and crippling injury are made but none of this is stated in Gisborne’s Journal. If one did not read carefully, one could easily make such assumptions. For example, it would seem that that young Benjamin Gabriel passed away at the western-most end of the journey after four straight days of exposure to rain and snow in the treeless barren; however, Gisborne’s entry on Nov. 20th mentions that Benjamin was dropped off at La Poile from the United Brothers while it sailed back east. Benjamin also appears in a table of wages. A wonderful historical find that provided more insight into this survey is a list of the survey’s expenses and names of the team members and their pay (Table 1). It seems rather crude that the list calls out the local Mic Mac aboriginals as “Indians”. It also initially seems like they are at the bottom of the pay scale, however, with a little bit of math correlations and references to dates in the journal, we see that all men were paid the exact same wage of ~ £0.29 per day (~ £52 adjusted to 2023) . Only Captain Hanrahan, Patrick Ryan, and Joe Paul were paid extra.

Patrick and Joe are mentioned in Gisborne’s journal as being his “best men”. By conducting the extrapolation, we also can see the team members who left in the undocumented first month of the survey: between the start of the survey (Sept. 1, 1851) and when this journal starts (Oct. 7, 1851).

Mr. L Morrissey is one of the original six members, starting in St. John’s, but he is not mentioned in the journal. His pay extrapolates to his departure on Oct. 6, 1851 and perhaps his departure motivated Mr. Patrick Ryan, another of the original six to depart on Oct. 10, 1851.

Figure 6 is a photo of the Telegraph Line in Western Newfoundland in 2019. Janet saw the piles of rock from the road while we were scouting. It turns out this is the same location is where Gisborne had to end his westward trek. While the rock piles remain, the poles, wooden cribs, and insulators are long gone. It turns out that the 1856 pole line in this location was re-deployed from Garia to St, Georges in 1891 by Alexander MacKay. All items of the line were actually removed and reused. I walked ~ 5km of the line and was able to recover a broken insulator from 1879 (the third “upgrade”) as well as pulled a preserved pole base from the bottom of a crib located in a bog. Knowing these items mark the end of the survey make them even more special. STF

PHILIP PILGRIM is the Subsea Business Development Leader for Nokia's North American Region. 2021 marks his is 30th year working in the subse a 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.