Author’s Note

While speaking to students on the brilliant devices we use to chat to friends today I realized they had no idea how it all began. The marvels of communication we enjoy in the 21st century make it difficult to fathom that it wasn’t always as it is now. Text messaging, e-mails, satellites and high speed Internet are built upon much humbler beginnings and Canada, especially Newfoundland, played an important role. I decided to investigate and Ghost Messages is the result of that snooping into the dusty past.

Ghost Messages tells of the 1865 attempt to lay the first trans-Atlantic cable which would connect the two halves of the world with instant communication. The communication wasn’t digital; it wasn’t fibre optics or telephone; in fact, it wasn’t even a human voice. It was Morse code transmitted for 2300 nautical miles in dots and dashes along a one-inch thread composed of seven strands of fragile copper wire! (I am pleased to say I have a piece of that original wire cable, dredged up from the bottom of the ocean, and enjoy showing students when I give presentations in schools.)

At the time, a transatlantic cable was thought to be an impossibility – science fiction – but this was an age of miracles when some of the greatest men of vision and science worked together to create miracles of their own. Their names are synonymous with world-changing advances: Cyrus Field, Samuel Canning, Isambard Brunel, Daniel Gooch, William Thomson (later known as Lord Kelvin), Samuel Morse and Michael Faraday. All of these gentlemen, and many more, contributed to this project.

The Great Eastern was a remarkable ship – it was five times larger than any vessel built, was seven hundred feet long and utilized three methods of propulsion – sail, propeller and paddlewheel. The innovative double hull made it unsinkable and nearly indestructible, requiring the invention of the wrecking ball to take it apart.

On that first cable-laying attempt in 1865, one of the greatest captains to sail the blue sea was at the helm, Captain James Anderson. He really did manage not once, but numerous times, to find the one-inch cable when it was lost miles below on the ocean floor. Suspected sabotage by the Fenians is also recorded in the history books, and it was eventually discovered that the cable itself had done the damage when brittle shards of the outer casing imbedded themselves into the wire, shorting the signal.

The legend of the ghost aboard the Great Eastern is well documented in the ship’s lore; and when the ship was finally dismantled, the skeletons of both the riveter and his bash boy were found between the hulls, where they had fallen to their deaths when the ship was being built. I have taken a little literary licence by naming these forgotten souls as their true identities have disappeared into the mists.

As a writer, I could not have dreamed up a more exciting plot. History itself has provided the people, setting and dramatic events complete with a ship of legend, ghosts, broken cables, storms, and sabotage. It is my hope that this book will instill in you a sense of wonder and respect for those intrepid scientists and explorers on whose inventions and discoveries our modern communications world is built. The next time you e-mail, text message or Twitter a friend, remember it all began long ago with a fragile thread thousands of miles long and those whispered “ghost messages.”