John Pender
Encyclopedia
Sir John Pender British Submarine communications cable
pioneer, was born in the Vale of Leven
, Scotland
, and after attending school in Glasgow
became a successful merchant in textile fabrics in that city and in Manchester; where he had a warehouse in Peter street near The Great Northern Warehouse
. He lived at Middleton Hall, County Linlithgow, Foots Cray
Place, Sidcup, Kent, and Arlington House, 18 Arlington Street London.
off the coast of Ireland to Heart's Content, Newfoundland and Labrador
. This cable was the most successful and commercially viable of all the transatlantic cables and was 100% British financed, unlike the previous transatlantic cable-laying attempts, which had had some financial backing from American Investors. The Anglo-American Telegraph Company (formerly the Atlantic Telegraph Company) and The Gutta-percha
Company and Glass, Elliott (Greenwich, London) merged into the Telegraph Construction and Maintenance Company 'Telcon' (which was taken over decades later by British Insulated Callender's Cables
), and laid the first successful cable in 1866 and ended up manufacturing and laying all of Eastern Telegraph's cables and most of the submarine telegraph cables of the rest of the world.
He founded 32 telegraph companies, including Eastern Telegraph, Eastern and South African Telegraph, Western Telegraph Europe and Azores Telegraph Company, Australasia and China Telegraph Company, London Platino-Brazilian Telegraph Company, Pacific and European Telegraph Company which later became Cable & Wireless
. In 1934, Imperial and International Communications, formerly the Eastern Telegraph Company (the amalgamation of those 32 telegraph companies), became Cable & Wireless. The new name was designed to more clearly reflect the combined radio and cable services which it offered, without reference to the Empire. Cable & Wireless is one of the world's leading international communications companies. It operates through two standalone business units. International and Europe, Asia & U.S.
in parliament as a Liberal MP in 1862 to 1866 (the seat was disenfranchised by the Reform Act 1867), and Wick Burghs
from 1872 until his defeat in 1885. He was unsuccessful Liberal Unionist
candidate in Wick Burghs in 1886 and in Govan
at the by-election in 1889
, and again represented Wick Burghs from 1892 to 1896. He was made a K.C.M.G. in 1888 and was promoted in 1892 to be G.C.M.G. His eldest son James (b. 1841) Sir James Pender, 1st Baronet
, who was MP. for Mid Northamptonshire in 1895–1900, was created a baronet in 1897; and his third son, John Denison-Pender
(b. 1855), was created a K.C.M.G. in 1901, the year in which he was living at Footscray Place in Sidcup
.
including 'Giudecca La Donna Della Salute and San Georgio, a view of Venice' which was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1941 and arguably Turner’s best work, which was sold in 1897 for 1,650 guineas to Donald Currie
, and just over a century later it broke all auction records (for works by a British Artist) when it was sold to Steve Wynn (entrepreneur) through Christie's (New York) for US$35.8 Million in April 2006; this painting remains just one of four of Turner's paintings of Venice to be in private hands. Also in Pender's collection were the works ‘An Event in the forest’ by Landseer, ‘Portrait of Princess Sobieski’ by Joshua Reynolds
, and works by John Everett Millais
, Gainsborough, and Canaletto. The collection was sold in parts the year after John Pender’s death.
Place, Kent, on 7 July 1896, he controlled companies having a capital of 15 million sterling and owning 73640 nautical miles (136,381.3 km) of cables (one third of the cables in the world), these cables formed the base of the networks that years later developed into the World Wide Web. Pender was married twice, first in 1840 to Marion Cairns, who died giving birth to his son Henry in 1841, their eldest son James survived, and in 1851 he married Emma Denison. They also had a son John Denison Pender (1855–1929) and two daughters Marion Denison Pender (1856–1955), who married George William Des Voeux, and Anne Denison Pender (1853–1902). The girls were painted in an Aesthetic Movement portrait titled "Leisure Hours" by John Everett Millais
in 1864 Detroit Institute of Arts
. Pender is buried in the grounds of All Saints' Church, Rectory Lane Foots Cray
with a fine but simple Celtic cross memorial, and is also remembered via the inauguration of the Pender Chair from the money raised by the memorial fund at the time of his death.
was ruined by the loss of the 1865 cable he formed the Anglo-American Telegraph Company to continue the work, but it was not until he had given his personal guarantee for a quarter of a million pounds that the makers would undertake the manufacture of a new cable. In the end he was justified, and telegraphic communication with America became a commercial success.
, a type of latex from Malaya which had been found preferable to India rubber for under-water use. The cable was armoured with iron wire, thicker at the shore ends where extra protection from anchors and tidal chafing was needed. Although this basic technology was in place, there was a world of difference between a cross-Channel line of less than twenty-five miles and a cable capable of spanning the Atlantic, crossing the 1660 nautical miles (3,074.3 km) between Valentia, on the west coast of Ireland, and Newfoundland in depths of up to two miles (3 km). There were difficulties of scale, and also of electrical management. In long submarine cables, received signals were extremely feeble, as there was no way of amplifying or relaying them in mid-ocean. In 1858, in Newfoundland, using the first Atlantic Cable, it was taking hours and hours to send only a few words, with repeats necessary to try to interpret the weak signals that had to be detected with a candlelit mirror galvanometer on which earth currents registered higher than the actual signals. Three operators at a time had to stand and watch the beam trace on a wall at Newfoundland and make a majority guess about what the intended character was that was coming in.
The original sending voltage applied to the first Atlantic cable in 1858 had been about 600 volts. The British physician, Dr. Whitehouse, made one of the classic mistakes that is still today being made by telecommunications users, when the signals didn't get through, he raised the voltage. Lord Kelvin, the physicist director of the Atlantic Telegraph Company, had reservations, but he was overridden by the non-technical "chief electrician," Dr. Whitehouse. Whitehouse cobbled together apparatus to raise the sending voltage to about 2,000 volts, and the cable's insulation failed and blew apart. After only three months of use and a total of 732 messages, the first cable across the Atlantic Ocean went dead, apparently forever; and with thousands of investors losing their money 'in the sea.'
The Telegraph Construction and Maintenance Company 'Telcon' came up with an improved cable design and built a new cable that was three times the diameter of the failed 1858 cable and weighed in at 9,000 tons in one 2300 miles (3,701.5 km) piece. To handle this huge weight of copper and iron, Telegraph Construction and Maintenance Company had to purchase the largest ship in the world at the time, a ship sailors regarded as jinxed, the 700 feet (213.4 m) cargo ship originally named Leviathan, renamed it Great Eastern
and fitted it out to be a cable ship.
. A crew of 500 was needed to operate the ship, of which 200 were needed merely to raise its anchor. Finally, on 23 July 1865 the Great Eastern started off from Valentia to attempt retracing the route of seven years earlier. This attempt was almost as problem-filled as the first failed one in 1858. Several times, faults were found in the wire as it was paid out, and the operation had to stop for cable repairs on deck. On 2 August, the cable broke after laying 1186 miles (1,908.7 km) of cable, and the end was lost to the ocean floor. Dragging and grappling for it for nine days, and losing the end after snagging it twice, more than 2 miles (3.2 km) under the water, the attempt was abandoned on 11 August 1865, and the expedition turned back to England.
A major and sudden obstacle at the beginning of 1866 was the discovery that the Atlantic Telegraph Company, which had been established under an Act of Parliament in 1856, was acting outside its powers in trying to raise its capital by a further £600,000 to finance the 1866 expedition. There was no parliamentary time to amend the company’s charter. To avoid another year’s delay, Gooch and Pender established a new limited liability company, the Anglo-American Telegraph Company Ltd, to take over the project. Daniel Gooch
and John Pender’s actions saved the scheme. The balance of funds needed was secured through Telcon and the merchant bank of Morgan and Company only days before a stock market crash which might have ended any hopes of laying a cable that summer.
That year, 1866, the Great Eastern and its fleet set off again from Valentia Bay, Ireland, and started westward. The cable was, as in all previous attempts, operated from the deck of the ship, and was connected back through to England, so the English public knew of the progress. (This may have been the world's first press reports from the deck of a ship at sea, since in earlier attempts, the cable, while being operated, had not been connected through to shore.) After just two weeks and a relatively trouble-free run of laying 1896 miles (3,051.3 km) of cable, the Great Eastern arrived offshore from Heart's Content, Trinity Bay, Newfoundland. Being so large, the Great Eastern could not approach the shore closely, so a smaller ship took aboard the shore end to make the connection to the cable station.
On 27 July 1866 Daniel Gooch
the cable laying engineer on board the Great Eastern, sent a message back down the cable just before cutting the shore end off for transport to the cable station, informing Edward Stanley, 15th Earl of Derby
the British Foreign Secretary, that the New World was once again connected with the Old. Queen Victoria and President Andrew Johnson exchanged formal opening messages on 29 July 1866. The celebrations in America were muted in comparison with those of 1857, as war had recently ended, and the new Atlantic telegraph, much more than on previous expeditions, was now seen as a product of British work and capital. As to operating details, the speed of transmission was eight words per minute (a speed that many submarine telegraph cables operated at for decades afterwards), and the rate for twenty words or less, including address, date and signature, was $100 in gold or $150 in greenback banknotes, while additional words were $5 in gold, $7.50 in greenbacks each. Deep-sea cables, no longer a heroic struggle against the elements, had become instead a mature technology and a serious business.
As an aftermath to final success, Great Eastern sailed back to sea, and after 30 attempts managed to grapple the end of the 1865 cable it had lost the year before, splice to it, and lay a new end to Heart's Content. This meant that the first successful cable crossed the Atlantic on 27 July 1866 (with service to the U.S. on 29 July) was duplicated on 9 September 1866. So, the first successful route had two cables from very early days.
John Pender's contribution to the Atlantic venture, especially after 1862, had been substantial, and ultimately he had risked everything he owned on the 1866 attempt. Experience with the Atlantic line had shown Pender that intercontinental cables were no longer a gamble, that technical improvements had reduced them to an acceptable risk. Moreover they could be exceptionally profitable. This encouraged him to continue promoting long-distance telegraphs, and the companies he launched during the following years laid cables to the Far East, Australasia and South America. Once a line was established, he followed a pattern of consolidating it into his parent company. Pender made another fortune, and was rewarded with his knighthood in 1888.
), was opened in 1872. It was operated in two sections, Bombay to Singapore by the British India Extension Telegraph Company and Singapore to Adelaide by the British Australian Telegraph Company, both under Pender's control.
. Finally, 1873 also saw the creation of the Brazilian Submarine Telegraph Company, which had several directors and shareholders in common with Eastern Telegraph and opened a cable from Lisbon, Portugal, to Pernambuco, Brazil, in 1874.
Between 1879 and 1889 Pender's group added Africa to its list of cable routes through three companies, African Direct, a joint venture with Brazilian Submarine; West African, incorporated into Eastern Telegraph; and Eastern and South African. In 1892, following the expiration of the telegraph concession operated by Brazilian Submarine, that company and its main rival, Western and Brazilian, formed a new venture, the Pacific and European Telegraph Company, to renew the concession and link Brazil with Chile and Argentina. Having helped to arrange this operation, Pender became chairman of Brazilian Submarine in 1893, further reinforcing his position as the leading figure in the worldwide cable business. After John Pender died in 1896; his successor as chairman of Eastern Telegraph and Eastern Extension was Lord Tweeddale, while Pender's son John Denison-Pender
, later Sir John, continued as managing director. The last stage in restructuring the set of companies Pender had been so instrumental in creating, came in 1899, when Brazilian Submarine, having absorbed two other London-based telegraph companies operating in South America, was renamed the Western Telegraph Company.
's success in sending a signal from Cornwall to Newfoundland in 1901 was soured when the Anglo-American Telegraph Company, part of the Pender group, forbade any further experiments, since they would infringe on the Pender group's monopoly of communications in Newfoundland. Marconi moved his work to Nova Scotia, and found the Americans and Canadians generally more receptive to his achievement than Europeans. Just years later their companies and technologies would merge.
and Jabez Balfour
, Pender founded the investment underwriting firm the Trustees, Executors and Securities Insurance Corporation, Limited in December 1887.
Submarine communications cable
A submarine communications cable is a cable laid on the sea bed between land-based stations to carry telecommunication signals across stretches of ocean....
pioneer, was born in the Vale of Leven
Vale of Leven
The Vale of Leven is an area of West Dunbartonshire, Scotland, in the valley of the River Leven.The areas name lends itself to Alexandria's local football club, Vale of Leven F.C., the secondary school, Vale of Leven Academy, and the Vale of Leven District General Hospital, as well as other local...
, Scotland
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
, and after attending school in Glasgow
Glasgow
Glasgow is the largest city in Scotland and third most populous in the United Kingdom. The city is situated on the River Clyde in the country's west central lowlands...
became a successful merchant in textile fabrics in that city and in Manchester; where he had a warehouse in Peter street near The Great Northern Warehouse
The Great Northern Warehouse
The Great Northern Warehouse is a former railway goods warehouse building of the Great Northern Railway, which has been redeveloped as a car park and leisure complex. The building is located at the junction of Deansgate and Peter Street in Manchester city centre, England...
. He lived at Middleton Hall, County Linlithgow, Foots Cray
Foots Cray
Foots Cray is a place in the London Borough of Bexley, near the town of Sidcup, in southeast London, England, United Kingdom.It took its name from Godwin Fot, a local Saxon landowner recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086, and from the River Cray that passes through the village. It lay on the old...
Place, Sidcup, Kent, and Arlington House, 18 Arlington Street London.
Telegraph companies
In London 1866, John Pender was the leading financier/director and Chairman of the Companies involved who, with his colleagues, undertook the first successful laying of the transatlantic cable from Valentia IslandValentia Island
Valentia Island is one of Ireland's westernmost points, lying off the Iveragh Peninsula in the southwest of County Kerry, Ireland. It is linked to the mainland by the Maurice O'Neill Memorial bridge at Portmagee, as well as by a ferry which sails from Reenard Point to Knightstown, the island's...
off the coast of Ireland to Heart's Content, Newfoundland and Labrador
Heart's Content, Newfoundland and Labrador
Heart's Content is an incorporated town in Trinity Bay on the Bay de Verde Peninsula of Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. The natural harbour that makes up the town is located on the east side of Trinity Bay and it is built along the northeast side and the southeast base of this...
. This cable was the most successful and commercially viable of all the transatlantic cables and was 100% British financed, unlike the previous transatlantic cable-laying attempts, which had had some financial backing from American Investors. The Anglo-American Telegraph Company (formerly the Atlantic Telegraph Company) and The Gutta-percha
Gutta-percha
Gutta-percha is a genus of tropical trees native to Southeast Asia and northern Australasia, from Taiwan south to the Malay Peninsula and east to the Solomon Islands. The same term is used to refer to an inelastic natural latex produced from the sap of these trees, particularly from the species...
Company and Glass, Elliott (Greenwich, London) merged into the Telegraph Construction and Maintenance Company 'Telcon' (which was taken over decades later by British Insulated Callender's Cables
British Insulated Callender's Cables
British Insulated Callender's Cables was a 20th century British cable manufacturer and construction company, now renamed after former subsidiary Balfour Beatty.-History:...
), and laid the first successful cable in 1866 and ended up manufacturing and laying all of Eastern Telegraph's cables and most of the submarine telegraph cables of the rest of the world.
He founded 32 telegraph companies, including Eastern Telegraph, Eastern and South African Telegraph, Western Telegraph Europe and Azores Telegraph Company, Australasia and China Telegraph Company, London Platino-Brazilian Telegraph Company, Pacific and European Telegraph Company which later became Cable & Wireless
Cable & Wireless
Cable & Wireless Worldwide PLC is a global telecommunications company headquartered in Bracknell, United Kingdom. Cable & Wireless specialises in providing communication networks and services to large corporates, governments, carrier customers and resellers...
. In 1934, Imperial and International Communications, formerly the Eastern Telegraph Company (the amalgamation of those 32 telegraph companies), became Cable & Wireless. The new name was designed to more clearly reflect the combined radio and cable services which it offered, without reference to the Empire. Cable & Wireless is one of the world's leading international communications companies. It operates through two standalone business units. International and Europe, Asia & U.S.
Parliament
He represented TotnesTotnes (UK Parliament constituency)
Totnes is a county constituency represented in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It elects one Member of Parliament , using the first-past-the-post voting system....
in parliament as a Liberal MP in 1862 to 1866 (the seat was disenfranchised by the Reform Act 1867), and Wick Burghs
Wick Burghs (UK Parliament constituency)
Wick Burghs, sometimes known as Northern Burghs, was a constituency of the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom from 1832 to 1918...
from 1872 until his defeat in 1885. He was unsuccessful Liberal Unionist
Liberal Unionist Party
The Liberal Unionist Party was a British political party that was formed in 1886 by a faction that broke away from the Liberal Party. Led by Lord Hartington and Joseph Chamberlain, the party formed a political alliance with the Conservative Party in opposition to Irish Home Rule...
candidate in Wick Burghs in 1886 and in Govan
Glasgow Govan (UK Parliament constituency)
Glasgow Govan was a parliamentary constituency in the Govan district of Glasgow. It was represented in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom from 1885 until 2005, returning one Member of Parliament elected by the first-past-the-post system.The area which the constituency...
at the by-election in 1889
Govan by-election, 1889
The Govan by-election, 1889 was a parliamentary by-election held on 18 January 1889 for the British House of Commons, constituency of Govan in Lanarkshire, Scotland....
, and again represented Wick Burghs from 1892 to 1896. He was made a K.C.M.G. in 1888 and was promoted in 1892 to be G.C.M.G. His eldest son James (b. 1841) Sir James Pender, 1st Baronet
Sir James Pender, 1st Baronet
Sir James Pender, 1st Baronet was a British businessman, yachtsman and Conservative Party politician. He sat in the House of Commons from 1895 to 1900.-Early life:...
, who was MP. for Mid Northamptonshire in 1895–1900, was created a baronet in 1897; and his third son, John Denison-Pender
John Denison-Pender
Sir John Denison Denison-Pender, GBE, KCMG , born John Denison Pender, was chairman and managing director of the Eastern Telegraph Company ....
(b. 1855), was created a K.C.M.G. in 1901, the year in which he was living at Footscray Place in Sidcup
Sidcup
Sidcup is a district in South East London in the London Borough of Bexley and small parts of the district in the London Borough of Greenwich.Located south east of Charing Cross, Sidcup is bordered by the London Boroughs of Greenwich and Bromley and Kent County Council, and whilst now part of...
.
Railways and paintings
Pender also had interests in railways and was persuaded to invest in the Isle of Man Steam Railway. As a result of this, No. 3 was named Pender in his honour. He also amassed a considerable amount of paintings and in the process built what became a well known collection of paintings including some of the works of J. M. W. TurnerJ. M. W. Turner
Joseph Mallord William Turner RA was an English Romantic landscape painter, watercolourist and printmaker. Turner was considered a controversial figure in his day, but is now regarded as the artist who elevated landscape painting to an eminence rivalling history painting...
including 'Giudecca La Donna Della Salute and San Georgio, a view of Venice' which was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1941 and arguably Turner’s best work, which was sold in 1897 for 1,650 guineas to Donald Currie
Donald Currie
Sir Donald Currie GCMG was a British shipowner.Currie was born in Greenock, Scotland. However, he spent his school days in Belfast at the Belfast Academy and later at the Royal Belfast Academical Institution and at a very early age he was employed in the office of a shipowner in that port...
, and just over a century later it broke all auction records (for works by a British Artist) when it was sold to Steve Wynn (entrepreneur) through Christie's (New York) for US$35.8 Million in April 2006; this painting remains just one of four of Turner's paintings of Venice to be in private hands. Also in Pender's collection were the works ‘An Event in the forest’ by Landseer, ‘Portrait of Princess Sobieski’ by Joshua Reynolds
Joshua Reynolds
Sir Joshua Reynolds RA FRS FRSA was an influential 18th-century English painter, specialising in portraits and promoting the "Grand Style" in painting which depended on idealization of the imperfect. He was one of the founders and first President of the Royal Academy...
, and works by John Everett Millais
John Everett Millais
Sir John Everett Millais, 1st Baronet, PRA was an English painter and illustrator and one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.-Early life:...
, Gainsborough, and Canaletto. The collection was sold in parts the year after John Pender’s death.
Family relationships
At the time of his death, which occurred at Foots CrayFoots Cray
Foots Cray is a place in the London Borough of Bexley, near the town of Sidcup, in southeast London, England, United Kingdom.It took its name from Godwin Fot, a local Saxon landowner recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086, and from the River Cray that passes through the village. It lay on the old...
Place, Kent, on 7 July 1896, he controlled companies having a capital of 15 million sterling and owning 73640 nautical miles (136,381.3 km) of cables (one third of the cables in the world), these cables formed the base of the networks that years later developed into the World Wide Web. Pender was married twice, first in 1840 to Marion Cairns, who died giving birth to his son Henry in 1841, their eldest son James survived, and in 1851 he married Emma Denison. They also had a son John Denison Pender (1855–1929) and two daughters Marion Denison Pender (1856–1955), who married George William Des Voeux, and Anne Denison Pender (1853–1902). The girls were painted in an Aesthetic Movement portrait titled "Leisure Hours" by John Everett Millais
John Everett Millais
Sir John Everett Millais, 1st Baronet, PRA was an English painter and illustrator and one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.-Early life:...
in 1864 Detroit Institute of Arts
Detroit Institute of Arts
The Detroit Institute of Arts is a renowned art museum in the city of Detroit. In 2003, the DIA ranked as the second largest municipally owned museum in the United States, with an art collection valued at more than one billion dollars...
. Pender is buried in the grounds of All Saints' Church, Rectory Lane Foots Cray
Foots Cray
Foots Cray is a place in the London Borough of Bexley, near the town of Sidcup, in southeast London, England, United Kingdom.It took its name from Godwin Fot, a local Saxon landowner recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086, and from the River Cray that passes through the village. It lay on the old...
with a fine but simple Celtic cross memorial, and is also remembered via the inauguration of the Pender Chair from the money raised by the memorial fund at the time of his death.
Anglo-American Telegraph Company
In the 1850s the United States supplied about three-quarters of Britain's cotton imports, more than 2 million bales per year; and as a cotton merchant Pender well understood the importance of transatlantic communication; he made his first fortune trading cotton. He was one of the 345 original investors who each risked a thousand pounds in the Transatlantic Cable in 1858, and when the Atlantic Telegraph CompanyAtlantic Telegraph Company
The Atlantic Telegraph Company was a company formed in 1856 to undertake and exploit a commercial telegraph cable across the Atlantic ocean, the first such telecommunications link....
was ruined by the loss of the 1865 cable he formed the Anglo-American Telegraph Company to continue the work, but it was not until he had given his personal guarantee for a quarter of a million pounds that the makers would undertake the manufacture of a new cable. In the end he was justified, and telegraphic communication with America became a commercial success.
Early submarine cables
The first working submarine cable had been laid in 1851 between Dover and Calais. Its design formed the basis of future cables: a copper conductor, the cable’s core, was insulated with gutta-perchaGutta-percha
Gutta-percha is a genus of tropical trees native to Southeast Asia and northern Australasia, from Taiwan south to the Malay Peninsula and east to the Solomon Islands. The same term is used to refer to an inelastic natural latex produced from the sap of these trees, particularly from the species...
, a type of latex from Malaya which had been found preferable to India rubber for under-water use. The cable was armoured with iron wire, thicker at the shore ends where extra protection from anchors and tidal chafing was needed. Although this basic technology was in place, there was a world of difference between a cross-Channel line of less than twenty-five miles and a cable capable of spanning the Atlantic, crossing the 1660 nautical miles (3,074.3 km) between Valentia, on the west coast of Ireland, and Newfoundland in depths of up to two miles (3 km). There were difficulties of scale, and also of electrical management. In long submarine cables, received signals were extremely feeble, as there was no way of amplifying or relaying them in mid-ocean. In 1858, in Newfoundland, using the first Atlantic Cable, it was taking hours and hours to send only a few words, with repeats necessary to try to interpret the weak signals that had to be detected with a candlelit mirror galvanometer on which earth currents registered higher than the actual signals. Three operators at a time had to stand and watch the beam trace on a wall at Newfoundland and make a majority guess about what the intended character was that was coming in.
The original sending voltage applied to the first Atlantic cable in 1858 had been about 600 volts. The British physician, Dr. Whitehouse, made one of the classic mistakes that is still today being made by telecommunications users, when the signals didn't get through, he raised the voltage. Lord Kelvin, the physicist director of the Atlantic Telegraph Company, had reservations, but he was overridden by the non-technical "chief electrician," Dr. Whitehouse. Whitehouse cobbled together apparatus to raise the sending voltage to about 2,000 volts, and the cable's insulation failed and blew apart. After only three months of use and a total of 732 messages, the first cable across the Atlantic Ocean went dead, apparently forever; and with thousands of investors losing their money 'in the sea.'
The Telegraph Construction and Maintenance Company 'Telcon' came up with an improved cable design and built a new cable that was three times the diameter of the failed 1858 cable and weighed in at 9,000 tons in one 2300 miles (3,701.5 km) piece. To handle this huge weight of copper and iron, Telegraph Construction and Maintenance Company had to purchase the largest ship in the world at the time, a ship sailors regarded as jinxed, the 700 feet (213.4 m) cargo ship originally named Leviathan, renamed it Great Eastern
SS Great Eastern
SS Great Eastern was an iron sailing steam ship designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, and built by J. Scott Russell & Co. at Millwall on the River Thames, London. She was by far the largest ship ever built at the time of her 1858 launch, and had the capacity to carry 4,000 passengers around the...
and fitted it out to be a cable ship.
Transatlantic cable
It took from January 1865 to that June to coil up the 2300 miles (3,701.5 km) of cable in the three circular tanks of the SS Great EasternSS Great Eastern
SS Great Eastern was an iron sailing steam ship designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, and built by J. Scott Russell & Co. at Millwall on the River Thames, London. She was by far the largest ship ever built at the time of her 1858 launch, and had the capacity to carry 4,000 passengers around the...
. A crew of 500 was needed to operate the ship, of which 200 were needed merely to raise its anchor. Finally, on 23 July 1865 the Great Eastern started off from Valentia to attempt retracing the route of seven years earlier. This attempt was almost as problem-filled as the first failed one in 1858. Several times, faults were found in the wire as it was paid out, and the operation had to stop for cable repairs on deck. On 2 August, the cable broke after laying 1186 miles (1,908.7 km) of cable, and the end was lost to the ocean floor. Dragging and grappling for it for nine days, and losing the end after snagging it twice, more than 2 miles (3.2 km) under the water, the attempt was abandoned on 11 August 1865, and the expedition turned back to England.
A major and sudden obstacle at the beginning of 1866 was the discovery that the Atlantic Telegraph Company, which had been established under an Act of Parliament in 1856, was acting outside its powers in trying to raise its capital by a further £600,000 to finance the 1866 expedition. There was no parliamentary time to amend the company’s charter. To avoid another year’s delay, Gooch and Pender established a new limited liability company, the Anglo-American Telegraph Company Ltd, to take over the project. Daniel Gooch
Daniel Gooch
Sir Daniel Gooch, 1st Baronet was an English railway and transatlantic cable engineer and Conservative politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1865 to 1885...
and John Pender’s actions saved the scheme. The balance of funds needed was secured through Telcon and the merchant bank of Morgan and Company only days before a stock market crash which might have ended any hopes of laying a cable that summer.
That year, 1866, the Great Eastern and its fleet set off again from Valentia Bay, Ireland, and started westward. The cable was, as in all previous attempts, operated from the deck of the ship, and was connected back through to England, so the English public knew of the progress. (This may have been the world's first press reports from the deck of a ship at sea, since in earlier attempts, the cable, while being operated, had not been connected through to shore.) After just two weeks and a relatively trouble-free run of laying 1896 miles (3,051.3 km) of cable, the Great Eastern arrived offshore from Heart's Content, Trinity Bay, Newfoundland. Being so large, the Great Eastern could not approach the shore closely, so a smaller ship took aboard the shore end to make the connection to the cable station.
On 27 July 1866 Daniel Gooch
Daniel Gooch
Sir Daniel Gooch, 1st Baronet was an English railway and transatlantic cable engineer and Conservative politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1865 to 1885...
the cable laying engineer on board the Great Eastern, sent a message back down the cable just before cutting the shore end off for transport to the cable station, informing Edward Stanley, 15th Earl of Derby
Edward Stanley, 15th Earl of Derby
Edward Henry Stanley, 15th Earl of Derby KG, PC, FRS , known as Lord Stanley from 1844 to 1869, was a British statesman...
the British Foreign Secretary, that the New World was once again connected with the Old. Queen Victoria and President Andrew Johnson exchanged formal opening messages on 29 July 1866. The celebrations in America were muted in comparison with those of 1857, as war had recently ended, and the new Atlantic telegraph, much more than on previous expeditions, was now seen as a product of British work and capital. As to operating details, the speed of transmission was eight words per minute (a speed that many submarine telegraph cables operated at for decades afterwards), and the rate for twenty words or less, including address, date and signature, was $100 in gold or $150 in greenback banknotes, while additional words were $5 in gold, $7.50 in greenbacks each. Deep-sea cables, no longer a heroic struggle against the elements, had become instead a mature technology and a serious business.
As an aftermath to final success, Great Eastern sailed back to sea, and after 30 attempts managed to grapple the end of the 1865 cable it had lost the year before, splice to it, and lay a new end to Heart's Content. This meant that the first successful cable crossed the Atlantic on 27 July 1866 (with service to the U.S. on 29 July) was duplicated on 9 September 1866. So, the first successful route had two cables from very early days.
John Pender's contribution to the Atlantic venture, especially after 1862, had been substantial, and ultimately he had risked everything he owned on the 1866 attempt. Experience with the Atlantic line had shown Pender that intercontinental cables were no longer a gamble, that technical improvements had reduced them to an acceptable risk. Moreover they could be exceptionally profitable. This encouraged him to continue promoting long-distance telegraphs, and the companies he launched during the following years laid cables to the Far East, Australasia and South America. Once a line was established, he followed a pattern of consolidating it into his parent company. Pender made another fortune, and was rewarded with his knighthood in 1888.
Nationalisation
In 1868 the British government decided to buy up all the inland telegraph companies, including English and Irish Magnetic, a process completed in 1870, but left overseas telegraphy in private hands. In 1869 John Pender created three more companies. The British-Indian Submarine Telegraph Company and the Falmouth, Gibraltar and Malta Telegraph Company completed the cable system between London and Bombay in 1870, while the China Submarine Telegraph company set about connecting Singapore and Hong Kong, Britain's main possessions in East Asia. Pender's other company, Telcon, supplied cable not only for these ventures but also for a cable from Marseilles to Malta, which provided France with a link to its colonies in North Africa and Asia. When the governments of South Australia and Queensland, Australia, decided that the monthly steamships between Australia and Britain were too slow a means of communication, it was John Pender whom they invited to fill the telegraphic gap between Bombay and Adelaide, Australia. The All-Sea Australia to England Telegraph, supplied by Telcon (which becameBritish Insulated Callender's CablesBritish Insulated Callender's Cables
British Insulated Callender's Cables was a 20th century British cable manufacturer and construction company, now renamed after former subsidiary Balfour Beatty.-History:...
), was opened in 1872. It was operated in two sections, Bombay to Singapore by the British India Extension Telegraph Company and Singapore to Adelaide by the British Australian Telegraph Company, both under Pender's control.
Reorganization
In 1872 Pender now set about reorganising his cable interests, first came the amalgamation of British Indian Submarine, Falmouth, Gibraltar and Malta, and the Marseilles, Algiers, and Malta companies with the Anglo-Mediterranean, which had been created in 1868 to link Malta, Alexandria, and the new Suez Canal. He became chairman of the Eastern Telegraph Company that resulted from their merger. Next, in 1873, he presided over the merger of his Australian, Chinese, and British India Extension companies into the Eastern Extension Australasia and China Telegraph Company. It was also in 1873 that Pender created a holding company, the Globe Telegraph and Trust Company. The holding company's investors received portions of shares in the operating companies, chiefly the Eastern Telegraph and the Anglo-American. All the companies so far named remained within the Eastern Telegraph group, except Anglo-American, which was taken over in 1910 by a U.S. firm, Western UnionWestern Union
The Western Union Company is a financial services and communications company based in the United States. Its North American headquarters is in Englewood, Colorado. Up until 2006, Western Union was the best-known U.S...
. Finally, 1873 also saw the creation of the Brazilian Submarine Telegraph Company, which had several directors and shareholders in common with Eastern Telegraph and opened a cable from Lisbon, Portugal, to Pernambuco, Brazil, in 1874.
Between 1879 and 1889 Pender's group added Africa to its list of cable routes through three companies, African Direct, a joint venture with Brazilian Submarine; West African, incorporated into Eastern Telegraph; and Eastern and South African. In 1892, following the expiration of the telegraph concession operated by Brazilian Submarine, that company and its main rival, Western and Brazilian, formed a new venture, the Pacific and European Telegraph Company, to renew the concession and link Brazil with Chile and Argentina. Having helped to arrange this operation, Pender became chairman of Brazilian Submarine in 1893, further reinforcing his position as the leading figure in the worldwide cable business. After John Pender died in 1896; his successor as chairman of Eastern Telegraph and Eastern Extension was Lord Tweeddale, while Pender's son John Denison-Pender
John Denison-Pender
Sir John Denison Denison-Pender, GBE, KCMG , born John Denison Pender, was chairman and managing director of the Eastern Telegraph Company ....
, later Sir John, continued as managing director. The last stage in restructuring the set of companies Pender had been so instrumental in creating, came in 1899, when Brazilian Submarine, having absorbed two other London-based telegraph companies operating in South America, was renamed the Western Telegraph Company.
Effect of wireless
The first confrontation between cable and the new medium of wireless ended in acrimony. Guglielmo MarconiGuglielmo Marconi
Guglielmo Marconi was an Italian inventor, known as the father of long distance radio transmission and for his development of Marconi's law and a radio telegraph system. Marconi is often credited as the inventor of radio, and indeed he shared the 1909 Nobel Prize in Physics with Karl Ferdinand...
's success in sending a signal from Cornwall to Newfoundland in 1901 was soured when the Anglo-American Telegraph Company, part of the Pender group, forbade any further experiments, since they would infringe on the Pender group's monopoly of communications in Newfoundland. Marconi moved his work to Nova Scotia, and found the Americans and Canadians generally more receptive to his achievement than Europeans. Just years later their companies and technologies would merge.
Trustees, Executors and Securities Insurance Corporation, Limited
Together with City financiers Leopold SalomonsLeopold Salomons
Leopold Salomons was a city financier and company director active in the City of London in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Salomons was born into a British Jewish family, but it has been suggested that he later converted to Christianity...
and Jabez Balfour
Jabez Balfour
Jabez Spencer Balfour was a businessman, British Liberal Party politician and fraudster.-Life:He was the son of James Balfour and Clara Lucas Balfour....
, Pender founded the investment underwriting firm the Trustees, Executors and Securities Insurance Corporation, Limited in December 1887.