The Ambrose Channel pilot cable, also called the Ambrose Channel leader cable, was a cable laid in Ambrose Channel at the entrance to the Port of New York and New Jersey that provided an audio tone for guiding ships in and out of port at times of low visibility. The cable was laid during 1919 and 1920; it had been removed from the channel and replaced by wireless technology by the end of the 1920s.
Ambrose Channel is the only shipping channel into and out of the Port of New York and New Jersey, an important commercial port. Delays posed a major problem for shipping en route to New York City, and bad weather could close the channel for days. Ships were forced to wait at the harbor's entrance for conditions to clear. These delays cost shipping companies substantial amounts of money, with each ship costing between $500 and $4000 per hour it was stopped (roughly $5,700 to $46,000 in 2013 dollars). [2]
The Ambrose leader cable was an armored cable with a single internal conductor (see picture) that acted like a long radio antenna laid on the channel floor. It originated at Fort Lafayette (near the present day Verrazano-Narrows Bridge), then extended 16 miles down the Ambrose Channel to the vicinity of Lightship Ambrose offshore. [4] It was powered by a generator at Fort Lafayette that produced 500 Hz (cycles per second) current at 400 volts, resulting in an alternating electromagnetic field along the length of the cable that could be detected to approximately a thousand yards away. [5] The current was mechanically keyed to send the word "NAVY" in Morse Code. [6]
A ship received by a pair of induction coils hung on opposite sides of the ship, and fed through an amplifier into a headset (see diagram, below). By switching between coils, the relative strength of the signal on each side could be compared. The ship maintained a course parallel to the cable by maneuvering to keep the signal strength constant. [7]
The pilot cable required a series of prior discoveries and inventions. In 1882, A. R. Sennett patented the use of a submerged electrical cable to communicate with a ship at a fixed location. Around the same time Charles Stevenson patented a means of navigating ships over an electrically charge cable using a galvanometer. The method became practical when Earl Hanson adapted early vacuum tube circuits to amplify the signal. [9]
Robert H. Marriott was a radio pioneer employed by the Navy in Puget Sound, where he conducted early experiments with underwater pilot cables. [10] His results were sufficiently promising that he recommended further development to Commander Stanford C. Hooper. [11] In October, 1919 Commander Hooper instructed A. Crossley, an expert radio aid, to develop and test the concept on a larger scale at the New London Naval Base. [12] Crossley installed a longer version of the cable that Marriott had designed. He used a wooden-hulled launch for the first round of tests before moving to a steel-hulled submarine for later tests. [13] Both types of vessel picked up the signal and followed the underwater test cable without problem. [14]
Following the successful tests at New London, the Navy proceeded to large scale testing in Ambrose Channel late in 1919. The minelayer Ord laid a pilot cable composed of 2,000 feet of leaded and armored cable, 2,000 feet of leaded cable, and 83,000 feet of standard rubber-insulated cable. [16] The USS O'Brien was fitted with receiving equipment and attempted to follow the cable out of the channel. Unfortunately, it was unable to detect a signal past the 1,000 foot mark, where a break in the cable had prevented the signal from continuing. [17] The break in the cable was repaired, but over the course of the winter of 1919–1920, crews found that the cable had broken in a total of fifty-two different places due to the strain placed on it while it was being laid. The damage was irreparable. [18] Going back to the drawing board, engineers tested 150-foot segments of three different types of cable and used the results to design a new full-size pilot cable. [19] The Navy ordered 87,000 feet of cable from the Simplex Wire and Cable Company in Boston. [20]
Once complete, the cable was loaded onto the USS Pequot in the Boston Navy Yard. The ship arrived in New York on July 31, 1920. [21] Ambrose Channel was already crossed by three telegraph cables, owned by Western Union, the Army, and the police, all of which had to be raised to the surface so the pilot cable could be laid underneath them. [22] The installation of the cable was completed on August 6, 1920, [23] and by August 28, electrical tests showed that both the sending and receiving circuits were functioning properly. [24] The Navy tested the cable using the seagoing tug USS Algorma. It then invited "representatives of various radio companies, shipping interests, pilots' associations, governmental bureaus, naval attaches, and others" for a public demonstration on board the destroyer USS Semmes from October 6 through October 9. [25] The ship's windows were covered with canvas and the captains took turns navigating using only the audio cues from the cable. [26]
The cable was well received. Even before the New London tests, the Washington Post called it "the greatest development in marine travel since the invention of the steam turbine" [27] and the Los Angeles Times declared the technology to be "one of the greatest peacetime gifts that science has devised." [28] Once operational, the latter newspaper called it "the greatest safeguard devised for shipping in modern history". [29] According to a 1921 trade magazine, leader cables had five functions: "to enable a ship to make a good landfall in thick weather, to lead a ship up the harbor, to lead a ship from open water through a restricted channel to open water on the far side, to give warning of outlying dangers, and to assist a vessel to keep a straight course from port to port and thus save fuel." [30] In 1922, the publication Radio World stated that the cable's first two years of operation had been successful. [31] Also in 1922, Radio Broadcast boasted about the money saved by the cable as well as the ease of using it. [32] The cable itself was paid for using public funds, but it was the responsibility of ship owners to outfit their vessels with receiving equipment. Installation of the cable cost roughly $50,000 [33] and the listening apparatus installed on each ship using the channel cost $1,200, [34] compared with hourly costs of delays that ranged from $500 to $4,000. [35] Radio Broadcast expressed the belief that navigation cables would become common for both ships and aircraft: "...there is a future for the audio cable... Its fullest usefulness at American ports and elsewhere waits, however, on that large appreciation of radio devices for sea as well as air navigation which pilots, both on the sea and in the air, expect, but do not as yet demand." [36]
Despite the media hype, it appears that the Ambrose Channel pilot cable never met with large scale commercial success. Initially, some contemporaries of the cable proposed that it be extended several miles past the Ambrose light. [37] Such plans never came to fruition, as advances in technology rendered the pilot cable obsolete. By 1929 the Baltimore Sun reported ships navigating the Channel blindly without making any reference to the cable. [38] In that year, Marriott publicly complained that navigation cables still had unrealized potential for guiding ships. [39]
Leader cable systems appear to have been made obsolete by the refinement of radio direction finding and the placement of radio beacons (low-power radio transmitters) at strategic locations. Those beacons are analogous to lighthouses, but can be "seen" in all weather, and are used for navigation in the same way as regular lighthouses. The first successful application of these radio beacons as "radio fog signals" were three stations installed near New York in 1921. [40] In 1924, there were eleven stations in operation in the United States and nearly three hundred ships suitably equipped. [41] By 1930, an article in the Journal of the Royal Society of Arts declared that "wireless aids and echo sounding have superseded [the leader cable]". [42] Today, more modern navigation tools such as radar, GPS, and lighted buoys help ships navigate Ambrose Channel.
Earl Hanson, one of the key players in designing the Ambrose Channel cable, writing for Popular Mechanics, viewed it as a step toward applying radio cable technology in vast swaths of everyday life, including guiding aircraft and navigating and powering automobiles. [43] The Ambrose Channel cable was removed from the channel and used in testing an early system of autolanding. [44] The cable found no more success in that role than it did in guiding ships. The Blind Landing Experimental Unit later tried a similar system briefly before also abandoning it in favor of wireless. [45]
The early history of radio is the history of technology that produces and uses radio instruments that use radio waves. Within the timeline of radio, many people contributed theory and inventions in what became radio. Radio development began as "wireless telegraphy". Later radio history increasingly involves matters of broadcasting.
USS O'Brien was the lead ship of O'Brien-class destroyers built for the United States Navy prior to the American entry into World War I. The ship was the second US Navy vessel named in honor of Jeremiah O'Brien and his five brothers Gideon, John, William, Dennis, and Joseph who, together on the sloop Unity, captured a British warship during the American Revolutionary War.
Radio broadcasting has been used in the United States since the early 1920s to distribute news and entertainment to a national audience. In 1923, 1 percent of U.S. households owned at least one radio receiver, while a majority did by 1931 and 75 percent did by 1937. It was the first electronic "mass medium" technology, and its introduction, along with the subsequent development of sound films, ended the print monopoly of mass media. During the Golden Age of Radio it had a major cultural and financial impact on the country. However, the rise of television broadcasting in the 1950s relegated radio to a secondary status, as much of its programming and audience shifted to the new "sight joined with sound" service.
USS Semmes (DD-189/AG-24) was a Clemson-class destroyer in the United States Navy during World War II. She was the first Navy ship named for Commander (USN), Rear Admiral (CSN), Brigadier General (CSA) Raphael Semmes (1809–1877).
John Conrad Nagel was an American film, stage, television and radio actor. He was considered a famous matinée idol and leading man of the 1920s and 1930s. He was given an Honorary Academy Award in 1940, and three stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960.
SS Cotopaxi was an Emergency Fleet Corporation (EFC) Design 1060 bulk carrier built for the United States Shipping Board (USSB) under the World War I emergency shipbuilding program. The ship, launched 15 November 1918, was named after the Cotopaxi stratovolcano of Ecuador. The ship arrived in Boston, 22 December 1918, to begin operations for the USSB, through 23 December 1919, when Cotopaxi was delivered to the Clinchfield Navigation Company under terms of sale.
Lightship Ambrose was the name given to multiple lightships that served as the sentinel beacon marking Ambrose Channel, New York Harbor's main shipping channel.
USS Princess Matoika (ID-2290) was a transport ship for the United States Navy during World War I. Before the war, she was a Barbarossa-class ocean liner that sailed as SS Kiautschou for the Hamburg America Line and as SS Princess Alice for North German Lloyd. After the war she served as the United States Army transport ship USAT Princess Matoika. In post-war civilian service she was SS Princess Matoika until 1922, SS President Arthur until 1927, and SS City of Honolulu until she was scrapped in 1933.
SS Prinz Friedrich Wilhelm was an ocean liner for North German Lloyd (NDL) from her launch in 1907 until the end of World War I. After the war, she briefly served as USS Prinz Friedrich Wilhelm (ID-4063) for the United States Navy returning American troops from France. The vessel was first chartered—and later purchased outright—by Canadian Pacific Steamships (CP) and operated under the names Empress of China, Empress of India, Montlaurier, Monteith, and Montnairn. She was scrapped in 1929.
Sylvan Arrow was a steam tanker built in 1917–1918 by New York Shipbuilding Co. of Camden for Standard Oil Company, with intention of transporting oil and petroleum products between United States and ports in the Far East. The ship was briefly requisitioned by the US Government during World War I but returned to commercial service in early 1919.
SM U-111 was one of the 329 submarines serving in the Imperial German Navy in World War I. She took part in the First Battle of the Atlantic.
SS Egypt was a P&O ocean liner. She sank after a collision with Seine on 20 May 1922 in the Celtic Sea. 252 people were rescued from the 338 passengers and crew aboard at the time. A subsequent salvage operation recovered most of the cargo of gold and silver.
Robert Henry Marriott (1879-1951) was an American electrical engineer, and one of the first persons to work in the field of radio communication. In 1902 he engineered the first commercial radiotelegraph link established in the United States by a U.S. company, connecting the island of Santa Catalina with the California mainland. He founded the Wireless Institute professional society in 1909, which was merged in 1912 with the Society of Wireless Telegraph Engineers to form the Institute of Radio Engineers (IRE), and served as the IRE's first president.
NAA was a major radio facility located at 701 Courthouse Road in Arlington, Virginia. It was operated by the U.S. Navy from 1913 until 1941. The station was originally constructed as the Navy's first high-powered transmitter for communicating with its bases across the U.S. and the Caribbean. During its years of operation NAA was best known for broadcasting daily time signals, however, it also provided a variety of additional services, using multiple transmitters operating on frequencies ranging from longwave to shortwave. The station also conducted extensive experimental work, including, in 1915, the Navy's first transatlantic transmission of speech.
Earl Metcalfe was an American actor.
Submarine signals had a specific, even proprietary, meaning in the early 20th century. It applied to a navigation aid system developed, patented and produced by the Submarine Signal Company of Boston. The company produced submarine acoustic signals, first bells and receivers then transducers, as aids to navigation. The signals were fixed, associated with lights and other fixed aids, or installed aboard ships enabling warning of fixed hazards or signaling between ships. ATLAS-Werke, at the time Norddeutsche Maschinen und Armaturenfabrik, of Germany also manufactured the equipment under license largely for the European market.
SS Mexique was a French transatlantic ocean liner of the Compagnie Générale Transatlantique (CGT). She was launched in 1914 as Île de Cuba but when she was completed in 1915 she was renamed Lafayette.
The Ambrose Snow was a 19th-century Sandy Hook pilot boat, built in 1888 from the C. & R. Poillon shipyard, for a group of New York Pilots. She sank after being struck by the Clyde line freighter Delaware in 1912. She was raised and reentered pilot service. In 1915, the Ambrose Snow was one of only five remaining boats patrolling the port of New York. She remained in operation for thirty-seven years.
The Sandy Hook was a steam pilot boat built in 1902, by Lewis Nixon at the Crescent Shipyard in Elizabeth, New Jersey. In 1914, she was purchased by the New York and New Jersey Sandy Hook Pilots Association to replace the pilot boat New Jersey, that was lost in 1914. She could carry 10 to 12 pilots that would help guide ships through the New York Harbor. The Norwegian America Line Oslofjord, with the Crown Prince Olav of Norway and Princess Märtha of Sweden on board, ran into and sank the Sandy Hook in 1939.
J. A. Moffett Jr. was an oil tanker built in 1920–1921 by the Federal Shipbuilding Company of Kearney for the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey with the purpose of carrying oil and petroleum products. Originally built as a steamship, the vessel had her engines changed in 1927 converting her into a motor vessel. She was torpedoed in 1942, killing the captain, before being abandoned, towed and sold for scrap.
Notes
Cited sources