In the days before wireless technology, a physical connection was required for distant contact. By the late 19th century, the greatest distances on earth were within the sphere of influence of the British Empire, and the telegraph was what allowed London to keep in touch with the colonies.
With a global economy emerging under the ever-present threat of international conflict, Britain’s vested interest in further building the submarine cable network was becoming increasingly significant. Its colonial territories were far-flung and effective communication meant better control – both strategic and commercial.
The Telegraph and the Railway
In 1886 the Canadian Pacific Railway Company completed its transcontinental line and accompanying telegraph. The west coast of North America was now connected with the east by rail, and with England by telegraph via the Atlantic cable. But Britain had ongoing security concerns and saw the trans-Atlantic cable as a weak point.
The telegraph link with North America ran through relatively shallow seas off the Newfoundland coast, where the Imperial government considered it vulnerable to enemy attack in the event of war. Its answer was a submarine cable across the Pacific – connection with its global empire from both directions west and east, a cable around the globe that avoided all foreign territory.
In Canada, the small settlement of Bamfield on the western shores of Vancouver Island would serve as one end of the Pacific cable. The other end of the line would be in Southport on Brisbane’s Gold Coast. Australia had been connected with Britain via Asia as early as 1870, and the Pacific cable would join the continent with Canada through Fiji via Norfolk Island, from where it would also branch to New Zealand.
Putting the Pacific Cable on the Sea Floor
A decision came quickly on the cable’s route in southern waters, but before its placement across the central Pacific was decided, threre would be drawn out negotiations and studies. The technology of the day meant that a series of relay stations was required to boost the signals, and at least one station would be needed between Bamfield and Fiji. It wasn’t until 1897 that settlement was reached on where the central Pacific relay stations would be built, and therefore what part of the ocean floor the telegraph cable would lie on.
So where to place the undersea cable as it stretched across the Pacific? The site had to be available for possession, and accessible for the unloading of coal to run the relay station generators and the laying of cable into the ocean. Hawaii was quickly eliminated – by now the island group was under the patronage of the USA, and this was to be an all-British affair. Tiny Pacific islands of no other interest to imperial powers suddenly took on strategic importance.
Spanning the Pacific by Telegraph Cable
In 1897 HMS Penguin under the command of Captain Field was despatched to investigate possible routes for the submarine cable. The following year Captain Field submitted his report, which considered the uninhabited Palmyra Island and Fanning Island as possible candidates.
Palmyra lies in the Northern Line Islands, about halfway between Hawaii and American Samoa, and at the time there was competition between Britain and the USA for formal annexation of the remote coral atoll. Ultimately, Palmyra Island would become a USA territory, but in any event it was not Captain Field’s preferred mid-Pacific choice for the cable. That distinction would go to nearby Fanning Island, also in the Line Islands, now known as Tabuaeran and part of the British Commonwealth state of Kiribati.
Primarily for reasons of its superior accessibility, Fanning Island was chosen as the last and most isolated connecting point in the All-Red Line, the British Empire’s communication link with its colonies around the world. Manufactured in London and laid from the CS Anglia (Southport to Fanning Island) and CS Colonia (Bamfield to Fanning Island), the final connection in the global submarine cable that stretched some 12,500km, was made on 31 October 1902, 44 years after the first Atlantic cable was laid.
References:
Atlantic-cable.com, Glover, B., Pacific Cable 1902-26, Accessed 2 January 2011
New York Times, The All-British Pacific Cable Near Completion, August 3, 1902
Brian Cross - Brian is a feelance writer specialising in content for the corporate sector, based in Wellington, New Zealand.
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