 | This article is missing information about the end and fate of the line.(September 2024) |
The All Red Line was a system of electrical telegraphs that linked much of the British Empire. It was inaugurated on 31 October 1902. The informal name derives from the common practice of colouring the territory of the British Empire red or pink on political maps.
The first transatlantic cable connected Ireland and Newfoundland in 1858, although it later failed. [1] [2] In 1866, the SS Great Eastern laid out a lasting link from Waterville, County Kerry and nearby Valentia Island, in Ireland, to Heart's Content, Newfoundland. [3]
By 1870, Suez was linked to Bombay, and from there to Madras, Penang, and Singapore. Australia was linked to British telegraph cables directly in 1871, by extending a line from Singapore to Port Darwin, although it ran through the Dutch territory of Java. [4] By 1872, messages could be sent direct from London to Adelaide and Sydney. Australia was linked to New Zealand by cable in 1876. [lower-alpha 1]
To complete the All Red Line, therefore, the final major cable laying project was the trans-Pacific section. A resolution supporting such a project was passed by the First Colonial Conference in 1887 and more detailed plans were approved at the 1894 Colonial Conference in Ottawa which was called specifically on the topic of the cable project. The "Pacific Cable Committee" was formed in 1896 to consider the proposal and in 1901 the Pacific Cable Board was formed with eight members: Three from Britain, two from Canada, two from Australia and one from New Zealand. Funding for the project was shared between the British, Canadian, New Zealand, New South Wales, Victorian and Queensland governments. In 1902 the Colonia, a newly-built cable vessel, began laying the 8,000 tonnes of cable needed to complete the Bamfield, British Columbia, to Fanning Island section of the cable. The final cost was around £2 million.
Originally, the British government felt the All Red system should have sea-landings only on British-controlled soil for security purposes. Due to this, Britain actively sought to acquire Fanning Island (now Tabuaeran in Kiribati) to use for a midpoint power regeneration / relay station between Western Canada and Australia on the trans-Pacific Ocean branch of the system. Fanning Island was annexed to the British Empire in 1888.
The Committee on Imperial Defence reported in 1911 that the All Red Line was complete. The network had so many redundancies that 49 cuts would be needed to isolate the United Kingdom; 15 for Canada; and 5 for South Africa. Many colonies such as South Africa and India also had many land lines. Britain also possessed the majority of the world's underwater-telegraph deployment and repair equipment and expertise, and a monopoly of the gutta-percha insulation for underwater lines. [5]
The 1911 report stated that the Imperial Wireless Chain should only be a "valuable reserve" to the All Red Line, because enemies could interrupt or intercept radio messages. Despite its great cost, the telegraph network succeeded in its purpose: British communications remained uninterrupted during the First World War, while Britain quickly succeeded in cutting Germany's worldwide network. [5]
The Pacific Cable Board laid a duplicate cable between Canada and New Zealand between 1923 and 1926, using the cable-laying ships Dominia [6] and Faraday . [7]
Atlantic Ocean stations
Pacific Ocean stations
Indian Ocean stations
In the final years of the British Empire, with a number of states federated or close to independence, a treaty with clearer financial divisions, responsibilities, and governance was established that would eventually replace the Pacific Cable Board. A treaty Commonwealth Telegraph Agreement was signed between Commonwealth nations in London, 1948 that formed the Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation. [8]
Present-day telecommunications in Canada include telephone, radio, television, and internet usage. In the past, telecommunications included telegraphy available through Canadian Pacific and Canadian National.
Electrical telegraphy is a point-to-point text messaging system, primarily used from the 1840s until the late 20th century. It was the first electrical telecommunications system and the most widely used of a number of early messaging systems called telegraphs, that were devised to send text messages more quickly than physically carrying them. Electrical telegraphy can be considered the first example of electrical engineering.
A submarine communications cable is a cable laid on the seabed between land-based stations to carry telecommunication signals across stretches of ocean and sea. The first submarine communications cables were laid beginning in the 1850s and carried telegraphy traffic, establishing the first instant telecommunications links between continents, such as the first transatlantic telegraph cable which became operational on 16 August 1858.
Cyrus West Field was an American businessman and financier who, along with other entrepreneurs, created the Atlantic Telegraph Company and laid the first telegraph cable across the Atlantic Ocean in 1858.
Transatlantic telegraph cables were undersea cables running under the Atlantic Ocean for telegraph communications. Telegraphy is an obsolete form of communication, and the cables have long since been decommissioned, but telephone and data are still carried on other transatlantic telecommunications cables.
Bamfield is a community that is surrounded by Crown Land, First Nation Lands belonging to the Huu-ay-aht Nations, and portions of the Pacific Rim National Park, located on Barkley Sound, Vancouver Island in British Columbia. The community, with a population of 179 as of 2016, is divided by Bamfield Inlet.
Bamfield Marine Sciences Centre is a marine research station established in 1972, located in Bamfield, Barkley Sound, British Columbia and run by the University of Victoria, the University of British Columbia, Simon Fraser University, the University of Alberta, and the University of Calgary. The Centre hosts numerous public education programs in marine related science. BC Field Trips organizes many instructional and educational programs for school-aged children at the Centre. The Centre also runs courses for university students during the summer and during the fall through their affiliated universities.
A cable layer or cable ship is a deep-sea vessel designed and used to lay underwater cables for telecommunications, for electric power transmission, military, or other purposes. Cable ships are distinguished by large cable sheaves for guiding cable over bow or stern or both. Bow sheaves, some very large, were characteristic of all cable ships in the past, but newer ships are tending toward having stern sheaves only, as seen in the photo of CS Cable Innovator at the Port of Astoria on this page. The names of cable ships are often preceded by "C.S." as in CS Long Lines.
The Overseas Telecommunications Commission (OTC) was established by Australia in August 1946. It inherited facilities and resources from Amalgamated Wireless Australasia (AWA) and Cable & Wireless, and was charged with responsibility for all international telecommunications services into, through and out of Australia. In effect, all overseas telecommunications was nationalized. Australia was adopting a Commonwealth-wide policy that had been adopted at the Commonwealth conference in 1945. The main goal was to end the artificial routing of traffic to cable or wireless depending on private financial profits.
The Atlantic Telegraph Company was a company formed on 6 November 1856 to undertake and exploit a commercial telegraph cable across the Atlantic Ocean, the first such telecommunications link.
The West Coast Trail, originally called the Dominion Lifesaving Trail, is a 75 km (47 mi) backpacking trail following the southwestern edge of Vancouver Island in British Columbia, Canada. It was built in 1907 to facilitate the rescue of shipwrecked survivors along the coast, part of the treacherous Graveyard of the Pacific. It is now part of the Pacific Rim National Park and is often rated by hiking guides as one of the world's top hiking trails.
The 1887 Colonial Conference met in London in 1887 on the occasion of Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee. It was organised at the behest of the Imperial Federation League in hopes of creating closer ties between the colonies, the Dominion of Canada and the United Kingdom. It was attended by more than 100 delegates, mostly unofficial observers, from both self-governing and dependent colonies. India, however, was not represented.
The 1894 Colonial Conference was called by the government of Canada to continue discussion begun at the 1887 Colonial Conference on a proposal to lay a telegraph cable at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean to create a communications link between Canada and Australasia and, by extension, to the rest of the British Empire as part of what became referred to as the All Red Line network of cables throughout the Empire.
COMPAC, the Commonwealth Pacific Cable System, was an undersea telephone cable system connecting Canada with New Zealand and Australia. It was completed by closing the last gap in Honolulu Harbor, Hawaii, at 6:25 a.m. B.S.T. on October 10, 1963. Public service of the cable commenced early in December 1963.
Cable & Wireless Communications Ltd operating as C&W Communications is a telecommunications company which has operations in the Caribbean and Central America. It is owned by Liberty Latin America and is headquartered in Denver, Colorado, US.
The Imperial Wireless Chain was a strategic international communications network of powerful long range radiotelegraphy stations, created by the British government to link the countries of the British Empire. The stations exchanged commercial and diplomatic text message traffic transmitted at high speed by Morse code using paper tape machines. Although the idea was conceived prior to World War I, the United Kingdom was the last of the world's great powers to implement an operational system. The first link in the chain, between Leafield in Oxfordshire and Cairo, Egypt, eventually opened on 24 April 1922, with the final link, between Australia and Canada, opening on 16 June 1928.
The Pacific Cable Station was built in 1902 in Southport, Gold Coast City, Queensland, Australia, continuing to operate for sixty years, finally closing in 1962. While most of the site has been dismantled, the Southport Cable Hut remains and has been listed on the Queensland Heritage Register and the Gold Coast Local Heritage Register.
The Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation (CTO) traces to the British Empire's Pacific Cable Board in 1901, though in its current form, was created by international treaty, the Commonwealth Telegraphs Agreement between Commonwealth nations signed in London on 11 May 1948.