3-028-555 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Laying the Submarine Telegraph between Malta and Gibraltar, off the Isle of Pantellaria, 1870. 'The laying of [this section of the Anglo-Indian Submarine Telegraph], which is to be carried across the Bay of Biscay from Portugal to Cornwall, was successfully accomplished two or three weeks ago. The screw-steamers charged with this service, the Scanderia and the Edinburgh,...met H.M.S. Newport...off the small isle of Pantellaria, half way between Sicily and Tunis, which meeting is the subject of our Illustration. The Newport, an Admiralty surveying-vessel, then showed them the way through the narrow Skerki channel, off the coast of Tunis, and accompanied them as far as Galita. The sketch we have engraved is one by Mr. Richard Cannon, assistant surgeon of the Newport. That vessel having made a survey of Pantellaria last year, he is enabled to give us some information respecting the island, which is seldom visited. It is of volcanic formation, rising to the height of nearly 2400 ft...There are numerous hot springs and hot-vapour caverns, which have been used from time immemorial by the sick as natural vapour baths...Most places in the island have Arabic names, but the people differ little from the neighbouring Sicilians'. From "Illustrated London News", 1870.