The All-Red Route Part II

By Jerry Hayes

The strategic importance of the Pacific Cable in time of war was demonstrated in 1914 when the cruisers Nurnberg and Leipzig of the Imperial German Navy visited Fanning Island. A landing party destroyed cable equipment, cut both sides of the cable and dragged them out to sea. One end was not dragged far enough; consequently, a primitive connection was established and help was summoned. Normal operation was restored after several weeks.

We have mentioned the great men who played a role in the development of the All-Red route; but those individuals who made the system work on a day-to-day basis also have a fascinating story to tell. In an age long before electronics, the skill and training of the telegraph operators, who were the IT (Information Technology) workers of their day, were crucial. Several of the great inventors and scientists of the day began their careers as telegraph operators. Perhaps, the best known is Thomas Alva Edison. Not as well known is the eccentric British theoretician, Oliver Heaviside, who made fundamental contributions to the understanding of telegraph transmission. He is commemorated in the Heaviside Layer, a portion of the upper atmosphere that facilitates long-range radio transmission.

Telegraph operators needed a high level of skill because the electrical signal that comes through a long telegraph cable is exceedingly faint. William Thomson, a.k.a., Lord Kelvin, devised an ingenious mechanical technique for amplifying the cable output so that the operator could tell what was sent over the line. The apparatus is simple: a light glass siphon, a pot of ink, a roll of paper tape and wires connecting the siphon to the cable output. One end of the siphon is immersed in the ink. Its other end is positioned so that it deposits the ink on the tape runningby it producing a continuous line. The siphon is also connected to the cable’s electrical output in such a way that it is moved by the current coming from the cable. The dots and dashes of Morse code are indicated by the line on the paper going up and down, respectively. To the untrained eye, the record of messages on the tape is just a wiggly line, but a skilled operator could read the message with a strikingly low rate of error. The siphon recorder left a permanent record and was the standard method for many years.

One of the skilled telegraph operators once lived in Victoria, the late R. Bruce Scott. Born in 1905 in Sydney, Australia, Scott left school at the age of thirteen to help support his family. His father had died prematurely from illness contracted during the Great War. After two years clerking in retail stores, including a stint on a button counter, Scott found his true vocation when he answered a want-ad for boys to learn submarine telegraph and to work overseas. Stifling his disappointment in learning that the work did not actually involve submarines, he enrolled in a rigorous training course in telegraphy. At the age of eighteen he volunteered to serve on Fanning Island, and his great adventures began.

Bruce Scott wonderfully recounts his life as a telegraph operator on remote outposts in Gentlemen on Imperial Service, A Story of the Trans-Pacific Cable (Sono Nis Press, 1994). The Fanning Island cable station was a true colonial enclave, reminiscent of the stories of Somerset Maugham. Scott lived in the bachelor’s quarters. Housing was also set aside for married couples. All were attended by Chinese and local native servants. A lively social scene with picnics and dances was fuelled by the supplies that arrived on the packet streamer.

In 1930, Scott moved to Bamfield, then anisolated fishing village, where he married and built a house with his own hands. In 1944, a daughter was born to the couple, an interesting tale. During WWII, a backup submarine cable ran from Bamfield to Clover Point and then to an army base in Gordon Head. For possibly the only time that the cable was used, Scott contacted a fellow telegraph operator at the base for news of his wife who had travelled to Victoria for the delivery. His colleague called the Royal Jubilee Hospital and returned the news that mother and child were doing well. The family lived in Bamfield until 1960 when the cable station closed. Afterwards they returned for summers to run a B and B in the house he had built. His daughter now lives in Oak Bay.

In Bamfield, Scott fell in love with the wild West Coast of Vancouver Island, with particular affection for Barkley Sound. He hiked its trails and canoed its waters. After retirement Scott began a second career as an author and advocate. His books centred on the West Coast, recounting tales of shipwrecks, life in Bamfield and the lives of the native people. (All are in the Victoria Public Library.) He also mounted a slide show on its wonders. His work was instrumental in establishing Pacific Rim National Park in 1971.

In this age of fibre optic cable and communications satellites, the day of telegraph cables and the All-Red Route is long past. The processing of messages is done by high-speed digital circuitry rather than human operators. The old Bamfield cable station now houses the Bamfield Marine Sciences Centre, which was established in 1972 by the Western Canadian Universities Marine Sciences Society (WCUMMS). Surely, Bruce Scott would have had a keen interest in its work.