3-017-075 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Indo-European Telegraph: Elphinstone Inlet, Persian Gulf, with a view of the Fort, 1865. From a sketch by Lieut. Hewett, commanding the gun-boat Clyde. 'The chief importance of the work was centred in the manufacture and laying of the enormous mass of cable, nearly 1500 miles in length...The first section from Gwadur to Mussendom, a barren promontory at the entrance to the Persian Gulf...was completed in the course of the month - a station being established upon an island in Elphinstone Inlet, long the resort of the piratical Arab craft which used to infest the Persian Gulf until it was placed in the charge of the Indian Navy, now the busy transmitting station of the telegraph to India...the inlet...extends in a winding course for ten miles from the entrance. On the island is the station, supplied with all the requirements of a first-class telegraph station, with the most improved telegraphic apparatus by Messrs. Siemens. There are, in addition, comfortable buildings for the signallers, who were selected here, as at other stations on the line, from among the best operators on the staff of the telegraph companies...public messages are being daily flashed between all parts of the civilized world and the chief cities of our Indian empire'. From "Illustrated London News", 1865.