Given the success of the new cable produced at Wharf Road, Henry Bewley may have been reasonably confident that the first link laid between England and France would be manufactured by the Gutta Percha Company. This was not, however, inevitable. In 1848 a competitive manufacturer had been granted a patent for coating telegraph wires with gutta percha and became involved in a successful experiment run by South Eastern Railway which had the cross-Channel telegraph in mind.
The key figure in the South Eastern Railway experiments was Charles Walker, superintendent of telegraphic installations, who had already overseen the fitting of cables by the company’s rail lines. As the cross-Channel cable had yet to be laid reports destined for London newspapers were carried by ship to Dover and then sent by telegraph to the metropolis via South Eastern Railway wires. Unfortunately, the telegraph lines ran through tunnels which were both damp and subject to acidic emissions from passing locomotives. It was soon discovered these affected the wires to such an extent that messages were frequently rendered indecipherable. Fortunately, Walker kept himself up to date with progress in insulation development and was aware that Thomas Forster, a cable manufacturer based in Streatham, a village south of London, had been working independently on a patent for coating telegraph wires with gutta percha. The day after the patent was granted Walker sent Forster a two mile length of conducting wire to be insulated at the Streatham works. When this was completed the new cable was used in an experiment organised to show it would be possible to send a message some distance under the sea. In preparation, Walker had several types of insulated cable made up and immersed in water between Folkestone and a point to the east of the town. After waiting several days he tried to send a message through each cable, a test that was successful in showing gutta percha was by far the best insulator. A much larger experiment eventually followed, which aimed to show the viability of telegraphic communication to France. This involved the Princess Clementine, a packet belonging to South Eastern Railways, and took place on January 10th, 1849.
The original plan was that the iron paddler would anchor in the Channel and communicate with London Bridge station via the Forster cable and the existing telegraph network. Plan B had to be instituted when the sea became rough and so the ship remained in Folkestone harbour as the cable was laid by the side of the pier and across the harbour mouth. Meanwhile, the telegraphic apparatus was set up on deck and connected to the power supply, a 72 plate ‘sand battery’. Everything was made ready for the first message which was sent at lunch time and vindicated Walker’s confidence. Throughout the winter afternoon the bell at the London Bridge terminal rang a number of times as messages passed backwards and forwards between the station and the deck of Princess Clementine.
The January experiment had clearly been organised with the cross-Channel link in mind as several cables were exhibited on the ship, which, in the view of Walker, would serve the proposed link to France better than that used in the experiment. All were insulated by gutta percha but were of different sizes and it was the thickest one, which had a total diameter of three quarters of an inch, that the superintendent suggested would be the most robust. When quizzed about the interruption in communication that would take place if a cable were damaged he suggested that two or three cables could be laid between whichever ports were nominated as landing points. These cables would be laid on different tracks, so making it unlikely that all would be damaged at the same time, but in any event the South Eastern Railway maintained a fleet of ships, one of which could soon arrive at a spot where a breach had occurred and make a repair.
Everyone who had attended the experiment seemed enthusiastic about the results and after the cable was wound in it was scheduled for display at the Royal Institution. No doubt Forster keenly anticipated the use of at least one ‘coast to coast’ length of his patented cable when the undersea project was finalised and he assured the South Eastern Railway directors that if they supplied the conducting wire he would provide enough gutta percha to coat it. However, even if the South Eastern Railway had subsequently managed to get the agreement of both the British and French governments to laying a cross-Channel cable, they would have needed to move quickly to forestall the plans of two brothers, John and Jacob Brett. The Bretts had their own plans for a submerged cable link to the Continent, a project that they had first been presented to the British government in 1845.
Like the Hancock brothers the Bretts were the sons of a cabinet maker and came from a non-conformist background, being members to the Church of the United Brethren, which had its roots in Pennsylvania. As an adult John Brett spent several years in the United States and this may have sharpened his interest in making a telegraphic link beneath the Atlantic. He and his brother certainly thought big, for even in the period when finding a way to securely insulate cables under lakes and rivers was proving difficult, the Bretts registered the General Ocean Telegraphic Company, an enterprise aiming to link Britain with Nova Scotia and all points beyond. At the same time they investigated the promotion of a new telegraph system devised by an American inventor, Royal Earl House. Under the House system messages were sent from a piano type keyboard, called the composing machine, to a terminal designated a printing machine. Each composing machine key was allocated a letter in the Roman alphabet and when it was pressed the printing machine stamped that letter on a strip of paper. It did not take long until a new company, the General Oceanic and Subterranean Electric Printing Telegraph Company, was registered by the Bretts who tried to publicise the system from an office near the Houses of Parliament. If anyone queried how messages between the machines would be carried they were shown a cable, specially made by an engineering company based in Millwall, which had a copper conductor sheathed in gutta percha and protected by spirals of iron wire. This protection was called armouring.
If an armoured cable was successfully laid to France it would obviously enhance the chance of getting backers to underwrite a similar link to Ireland and, eventually, to Nova Scotia. Seeking financial support for the project John Brett travelled to the Continent and during a visit to Berlin in 1847 he met Werner Siemens but, although they discuss the proposed submarine cable, the Year of Revolutions and the Prusso-Danish War halted further progress. Despite the considerable trouble the Bretts had in raising cash they still seemed ahead of the game by the time of the Princess Clementine experiment and reacted quickly to the idea that Walker and Forster had thought of a gutta percha insulated cable link first. In a letter to the Morning Post John Brett detailed the efforts he and his brother had made over the previous three years and asserted that he was the originator and patentee of the submarine telegraph.
Confident although John Brett appears to have been about being first in the submarine telegraph queue an item appeared in The Sun newspaper in the following year which put forward the name of another claimant as being the ‘original projector of a telegraph between Dover and Calais’. It was, perhaps surprisingly, Walter Hancock. Following the termination of business relationship between Henry Bewley and Charles and Walter Hancock, the brothers had established the West Ham Gutta Percha Company, based in Stratford. The Hancocks obviously had the support of the editor of The Sun because the article asserted it was Walter who had suggested the cross-Channel telegraph to Cooke and Wheatstone in 1842 and this was not the only contribution he had made to the realisation of the vision. Henry Bewley was not mentioned in connection with the machine that produced gutta percha insulated cable but, significantly, confirmation was given that it had been constructed in Stratford. Perhaps this fact tended to support the view that it had been deliberately developed out of sight of Bewley even though the work was almost certainly done at the Gutta Percha Company works.
Challengers to their claim to be at the forefront of the cross-Channel telegraph initiative may have irritated the Bretts, but there were greater hindrances to getting the cable laid than that. One was a lack of funding and the differing attitudes of the French and British governments another. The liasez-fair, ‘pull down the trade barriers’ attitude in London was not replicated in France where the government maintained strict control over the growing telegraph network. This control was to include any proposed link across La Manche. However, after negotiations in Paris a concession was granted to an Anglo-French company established by the Bretts to lay, connect and operate a telegraph cable from Britain. After the initial installation it was agreed revenues generated over a period of ten years could be retained by the concessionaires. Unfortunately, viable although this proposal was, no work actually began before King Louis Philippe fell in the Year of Revolutions and the agreement fell with him. Undaunted, the Bretts approached the new French leader, President Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, who granted a further decade long concession on condition the link was up and running within a year of the new agreement being signed. The clock started ticking on August 29th, 1849.
With no sign of a counter revolution in France the Bretts could at least be confident they would not have to return to the start line and so dedicated themselves to further fundraising and working out the technical details of laying the proposed cable. After John Brett’s letter in the Morning Post it was unlikely Mr Forster would have been offered the contract to manufacture the necessary cable and this was probably fortuitous. Although it appears the line laid at Folkstone harbour was subsequently cut up and used successfully in railway tunnels, it was found that Forster’s patented method of insulating the cable was flawed. It was based on wrapping the conducting wire in sheets of gutta percha but the preparation of these sheets had not removed all the woody material the imported blocks contained and this caused problems. The machine developed by Charles and Walter Hancock used steam heat and the pressure of a piston to cover a conducting wire with successive thin coats of gutta percha. This meant, in theory, slight imperfections in one coat would be covered by those laid on top but, because the methods used to process gutta percha at the Wharf Road factory were so comprehensive, imperfections should be fewer anyway. The Gutta Percha Company cables were rightly regarded as being superior to those manufactured by Forster.
Given the time scale and the need for economy the Brett’s decided that the proposed line need not be armoured for it would really be laid just to show messages could be transmitted across the Channel. If this was operational before the deadline a stronger and more permanent link could be laid later. So the line would be somewhat like that suggested for the Atlantic crossing by the resident of Dundee in the Northern Warder and General Advertiser for the Counties of Fife, Perth and Forfar. It would be a simple, insulated cable manufactured without armouring and held on the sea bed by lead weights. The vulnerability of such a fragile line was alluded to by one commentator who pointed out;
Those monsters of the deep might happen to take a fancy to the long body of the wire, and might by a single effort of their powerful jaws, snap it in twain – in the very middle of an important dispatch!
The Bretts were willing to take a chance on this and must have hoped there would be no volcanic eruptions in the Channel either, at least not until the first message got through!
The production and laying of an unprotected cable needed considerable organisation. Although the wire could be manufactured in Birmingham it would have to be transported to London where the insulation would be produced and applied. Meanwhile ancillary planning work was placed in the hands of an enterprise usually considered Britain’s first telegraphic engineering company. Responsibility for the lead weights would lay with that company too.
In 1820, the same year as the Regents Canal was opened, a firm of scientific instrument makers was established in University Street just off Tottenham Court Road. This was not far from the Percy Coffee House and we might wonder if the firm’s founder, a young Scot named William Reid, ever wandered down and popped in for light refreshment. The new enterprise was to be important in the development of the electric telegraph in Britain, for the Glaswegian ensured a reputation for excellent quality was established and maintained. Although the company eventually made instruments for inventors such as Cooke and Wheatstone it also offered services involving the construction of the telegraph infrastructure and it was Reid who did much of the planning for the cross-Channel cable. A large number of weights, dropped at regular intervals, would be needed to hold the proposed line on the sea bed. Each one had an upper and lower part as the photograph to the right show. The channel in the middle of the lower part was for the line itself. As can be seen, it would be quite slender. One commentator said it was as thick as a little finger, which seems just about right. Notice also that the weight carried the name Reid.
As the lead weights were being cast so the gutta percha cable was being prepared too. Forster provided a two mile length for the Princess Clementine experiment, but over 25 miles would be needed for the cross-Channel line. This was far too much to transport, as one length, from Birmingham to Dover, which was where the English terminal would be sited.
To oversee the cross-Channel development the Bretts set up the English Channel Submarine Telegraph Company. With no mention of oceans it sounded rather less grand than the brother’s previous enterprises - although still ambitious. The company ordered the copper wire core from a Birmingham company, Thomas Bolton and Sons, where problems immediately arose over the production of the lengths required. The diameter of the wire was stipulated as matching number 14 on a Birmingham Wire Gauge. There were no nationally determined standard measurements for copper wire in 1849, but the Birmingham Wire Gauge was widely accepted, a gauge of the type shown on the right being a useful tool for determining the diameter of the conductor to be produced. Clearly, the core could not be manufactured as one continuous run over 25 miles long but the buyer explained the company wanted each section to weigh 30lbs. He was immediately told this would be impossible and many more sections, each weighing much less, had to be accepted. In fact each of the sections dispatched, presumable along the Grand Junction and Regents canals, were around 100 yards long. This restriction in length would have serious consequences for the completed line as there would need to be ten times more joints than originally anticipated.
On reaching the Gutta Percha Company works in Wharf Road sections of the core were fed through the extrusion machine. Once insulated each had to be joined to the next until a longer but still manageable coil was produced. To do this the gutta percha coating was stripped from the ends of two adjacent sections. The revealed copper wires were then crossed and twisted before being covered with solder. Subsequently, a kind of gutta percha jacket was fixed over the joint, which looked similar to an elongated cigar. Given the length of the cable there were many such ''cigar' joints which would add to the difficulty of the laying process.
There was no question about how important the cable was going to be and doubtless Mr Statham did the best he could in maintaining quality control. However, although the insulated cable was almost certainly better than the one that would have been produced by Forster at the Streatham works, it did have flaws including the presence of air holes in the gutta percha insulation. Moreover, at least in some parts, the wire was off centre within the insulation jacket and rather than being covered by a succession of thin gutta percha layers, which was the ideal, the cross-Channel cable had only one. This meant no flaws would be covered by even a second coat.
Despite both the wire and the coating not being perfect the sections were probably the best that could be produced at the time with the funds available and to make sure they would at least conduct an electric current when under water, checks were made in Wenlock basin. A coil of cable would be lowered into the water with the ends of the copper conductor linked to a battery via a galvanometer. The galvanometer would then be used to determine how well the section under test would pass an electric current. When each coil was deemed in need of no further repair it was placed in the factory yard to await transportation to a wharf in Greenwich from where it would be shipped to Dover. In this hiatus some deterioration took place and small sections of the cable were also cut from the coils by souvenir hunters. Fractional pieces of material with historic association have a natural fascination and fragments of the potential cross-Channel cable appear to have been no exception. No doubt some filching was done with resale in mind.
The vessel that was to lay the cable was the Goliath a paddler hired from the General Shipowners Towing Company. In preparation for her duties a huge drum had been fitted on deck that was 15 foot wide and had a diameter of 7 feet. From this drum, which weighed two tons, the cable, which would weigh five tons, would be payed out but after the Goliath eventually collected the coils from Greenwich it sailed down the Thames with an empty drum. Creation of the complete line would not be done until everything had been tested again.
Everyone involved in the project would in all likelihood have welcomed the final preparations being done in a secure dock out of sight of public gaze for there was the usual crop of gongoozlers at Dover with ready comments and stupid remarks. However, such a facility was not available and much of the work had to be done on the Admiralty pier. Evidently some visitors derided the creation of the link and commented to those working on the coils that it was madness to think a line could be pulled backwards and forwards over 25 miles of sea bed. Evidently these know-alls thought that rather than transmitting an electric current this was the way messages would be sent between England and France, presumably a different number of pulls representing different letters. A more positive view was expressed by one local resident who pointed out that many had doubted a tunnel could be driven through Shakespeare Cliff when the South Eastern Railway had extended the line from Folkestone to Dover a few years previously but they had been proved wrong. Unfortunately, others with nothing to do and all day to do it in, tried to surreptitiously take segments of the cable as mementos or just sliced through the cable to check if there was, indeed, a copper wire in the middle.
At least Reid was able to work on the Goliath. Sitting on a wooden beam on deck with his galvanometer he replicated the tests done at Wharf Road, the coils this time being immersed in sea water. If a coil was sound he would call out 'Right' but if it needed work then 'Chalk' would signal a repair was needed. Gradually all the good coils were joined together and wound onto the drum, tedious work but needing considerable care. Evidently Reid had acquired a kind celebrity status and this project, if successful, would be something of a crowning glory towards the end of an impressive career.
As the day assigned for cable laying approached a horsebox appeared at town’s railway station. This would be where the Dover terminal, fitted with a modified 'House Roman' unit would be located. From the terminal to the point where the cable on the drum would be joined, the communication wire, insulated with caoutchouc was run through a lead pipe and similar protection was installed at Cape Gris Nez. Meanwhile, an Admiralty survey vessel, the Widgeon, sailed across across the channel laying buoys to mark out the route the Goliath would take. Finally, with the coil completely wound round the drum and all the two part lead blocks ready to be used as the cable was fed into the sea, the Goliath left Dover on the morning of Wednesday, August 28th, 1850. It hauled the hopes and ambitions of the Bretts too and there would have been many others anxious to hear of the success, or otherwise, of the day's work. There were those, for example, who had helped produced the cable at Wharf Road, or newspaper proprietors who were keen to find a more reliable conduit for Continental information than cross-Channel steamers struggling through rough seas, or the Siemens and Hancock brothers and almost certainly Prince Albert, who always took a keen interest in such technological development.
As the drum of the Goliath began to turn the thin line was payed out over the stern where the two parts of each lead weight was secured by hammered rivets. The metal units weighed between 8 and 16 lbs, the choice of which to use being made according to the soundings taken by the Widgeon that was now shadowing the cable ship. The way the information was passed to the Goliath was quite unsophisticated considering the technical nature of the project. A blackboard was erected over the paddle box of the Royal Navy vessel and on it messages were written in much the same way as 'Chef's Specials' might be chalked up in a country pub today. As it was apparent there was some danger to those responsible for hammering the lead weights together if they had to work too quickly it was decided to stop the ship briefly every time a weight was secured, which was approximately every sixteenth of a nautical mile. This clearly slowed the passage down but the weather was kind and it would still be light in the evening when the crossing was completed.
As the captains of both ships knew, their vessels would cross two notorious area of shallows, one called the Ridge (La Colbert by the French) the other the Varne, which had a submarine valley, possibly some 180 feet deep, between them but these presented no problems. At all depths the gutta percha and copper cable sank to the bed as planned. Any fears that a large fish might take an interest in a potential source of food proved unfounded, perhaps the churning water of four paddle wheels keeping any monsters of the deep at a safe distance.
Few would have watched the progress of the Goliath as she approached the French headland more keenly than John Brett but he had a greater interest than most. Standing near the horsebox at the railway station he used a telescope to keep track of the cable laying vessel but he would have probably been unable to see activity on deck, when, after the anchor had been dropped just off the Cape, the end of the line was carried into the ship’s cabin and connected to a second modified 'House Roman' terminal. Messages could now be sent between Dover and the Goliath and no doubt those who had made the passage waited anxiously to see if their efforts had been worth while. Consequently, there would have been both elation and dismay for, although it was clear a message could be both transmitted and received, some of the letters stamped out by the teleprinter were rather jumbled! Throughout the rest of the evening, after a needle type receiver had been set up on land, efforts continued to be made to make sense of messages from Dover but it didn’t matter really because, without doubt, a telegraphic link had been established between England and France within the time frame set. In this the Bretts could claim success.
Despite the high number of ‘cigar’ joints it was clear the copper wire and gutta percha insulated cable had done its job and a great step forward had been taken. Job well done, with the cable having been secured at Cap Gris Nez and the telegraphic party and their apparatus having departed, the turning paddle wheels of the Goliath marked her departure. No doubt all on board were pleased at being involved in such an important event and this would apply to those on the Widgeon too. I am sure there were also celebrations at both Thomas Bolton and Sons and the Gutta Percha Company when news of the success of the insulated cable came through. A better understanding of the problems of the phenomena of induction, which caused the jumbled messages, would come in time but it is no surprise that widespread press coverage focused on the success of the link rather than the negatives.
Although the line laid by the Goliath failed within a day, probably because of the action of the currents on the French coast, a new armoured cable would be laid in 1851 and this would give good service for decades.
It really was rather remarkable that a material only properly introduced to Britain in 1842 had, within a few years, made such an impact in so many areas of everyday life and provided such an important contribution to the establishment of the telegraphic link between England and France. The factory adjacent to Wenlock basin on the Regents Canal was in the forefront of developing all kinds of products made from the solidified gum imported via Singapore. Although the material is now all but forgotten its use by one profession means Google offers endless options of linking gutta percha to the word canal even today - but that canal is a root canal, not one named after the Prince Regent!
When London Became An Island
Gutta Percha comes to the Metropolis
Chapter 13 - A message from the horsebox
Commanders and clippers
A Birmingham Wire Gauge
Part of the 1850 cable
Laying the cable