3-028-612 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Falmouth, Gibraltar, and Mediterranean Telegraph: the cliffs at Porthcurnew Bay, Cornwall, 1870. 'The successful completion of the submarine telegraph line...in connection with the Anglo-Mediterranean and the British Indian submarine telegraphs, to form a direct submarine communication all the way from India to England...has been announced, to the public satisfaction...Porthcurnew Bay...was the landing-place of the Mid-Channel telegraph cable, which communicates with the signal-ship Brisk,...to give information of vessels entering or departing from the British Channel...The screw steam-ship from which the shore-end cable is being landed...is the Investigator. The Scanderia, with the Hibernia and the Edinburgh, had brought the main cable across the Bay of Biscay. These three vessels are shown lying in the bay...[seen] from the cliffs, looking down the valley to the sea. The shore end, a heavy cable protected by metal strands woven round it, was joined, on shore, to a lighter cable...This land cable was buried in a trench, cut through the earth and rock...over a wild and hilly country, is erected a range of telegraph-poles, carrying the single wire of the Mid-Channel Telegraph and the two wires of the Gibraltar and Falmouth Telegraph'. From "Illustrated London News", 1870.