Rathlin Island Communications

 

Lloyds� links

Lloyds of London produces Lloyds List, a daily newspaper established in 1734. A feature of the paper from its origins has been the publication of world-wide shipping movements and casualties, for the assistance of Lloyds' underwriters who may have insured the vessels listed. Hence gathering information was essential and Lloyds had signal stations positioned all around the coasts and these were a major link in the chain of information.

 

One such station was on Rathlin Island.

 

Lloyds signalling station on the east point of Rathlin was of importance to the company, as it was from here that the first glimpses of ships crossing the Atlantic to dock in Belfast, the Clyde or the Mersey were first gained. Signalling took place by a system of semaphores (flags) between ship and mainland to convey the status of the ship and its cargo.   

Under normal conditions the semaphores could be spied with telescopes from the coastguard lookout at Torr Head, but foggy conditions obscured sight altogether, yet vision remained good from Rathlin's east lighthouse, but forwarding messages from the island to the mainland telegraph station was an ongoing problem.

 

Lloyds and Rathlin

Lloyds� involvement with the island can be traced back to about 1881. The island was the property of a Mr. Gage. It contained 3,397 acres, 2 roods 14 poles, valued at �583.3s.11d per annum. Mr. Gage leased a portion of the island to the Lloyds committee from May 1st 1881 for 99 years. The ground leased is situated in the townland of Ballycarry, near to and on the south side of the lighthouse containing 3 acres.

On this site, which bordered the cliffs, a dwelling house, watchhouse and flagpole were to be built. These were constructed by local builder Mr. Dallet for �65 and boundary stones with �LLOYDS� carved on them were placed for �3. The dwelling house has since been demolished and a new one erected for the purpose of Irish Lights; the controlling body of all lighthouses in Ireland and Scotland, which is based in Trinity House, Dublin. Of the watch house and flagpole only their concrete foundations now remain, yet the boundary stones and their inscriptions are still intact.

 

Rathlin/Ballycastle link

Pigeon post

Initially, carrier pigeons were purchased in Antwerp from Lloyds' agent, a Mr. Engels and forwarded to Mr. Bryne in Ballycastle who employed Robert McCartney at �1 per week to care for the birds. In all, forty pairs of pigeons were kept from August 1891 onwards, yet it was not until August 1892 that the birds were actually engaged for signalling to the island.   

During this period the birds, according to Mr. Bryne, �were under threat by the neighbourhood hawks�.   

It would appear that Lloyds� agents were requiring too much money for working the birds and Lloyds themselves were dissatisfied with the inconsistency of pigeon post. In April 1893 the service was suspended although pigeon post resumed for this route in 1899.

 

Semaphore

By 1 March 1897 a signalling station was operative.   

The sons of Mr. Dunovan and Mr. Sullivan the principal keeper and the assistant keeper were engaged and vessels were reported by flags to Torr Point, where the information would travel down the telegraph line.

 

The �ardent amateur of electricity�

It was amidst these haphazard signalling procedures that Marconi was employed.

 

Guglielmo Marconi was born on April 25^th 1874, the son of Guiseppe Marconi and Irish born Annie Jameson. Until he was twenty-one years old he lived near Bologna at the Villa Grifone. This large house and estate buildings enabled him to find many bits and pieces to construct the latest toy in his boyhood. He was always making some gadget and talking about �my electricity�. He had made friends with an old blind telegraphist who taught him the Morse Code.

As a teenager he was renowned for his magic tricks and was affectionately called the �trickster�. But this hobby was increasingly overshadowed by an interest in electrics, which first of all developed into experiments in the bedroom and later became a total commitment to achieve wireless telegraphy � after he had dropped out of university!

At the age of eighteen, with the help of an eminent electrical scientist from Bologna University who was a family friend, he engaged in tenuous experiments mostly by using trial and error methods. His father Guiseppe was extremely upset that young Guglielmo could not qualify for the Naval Academy or pass University Matriculation.

In 1894 Marconi read of the experiments of Heinrich Hertz and his imagination became more and more obsessed with the idea of sending Morse messages without wires. Hertz had accomplished this over a distance of sixty metres but had never followed up this breakthrough, which had no practical function. Other scientists of the period had improved the principals and methods but had not achieved anything significantly different in the range of transmission. Marconi wanted to transmit round the world. By 1896, at just under twenty-two years of age, he was able to transmit up to two kilometres. At this distance Guglielmo felt he was doing well enough to offer his �new wireless� to the Italian Government. The officials politely turned it down.

After the possibility of a contract was rejected by the Italian Post Office, Marconi moved to England the home of the world�s largest navy. His mother, with whom he always spoke English, was sure that England � well known for its industrial prowess - would find a use for the invention. Here he utilised the connections that his mother's social standing could bring to further his intent, to gain funding for greater experimentation.

 

Annie and Guglielmo Marconi arrived in England at the end of February, 1896. They lived at 71 Hereford Road, Bayswater, London.

 

Wherever Marconi lived the �wireless room� was always the most important room in the house. Anyone entering it while he was at work did so �on tiptoe with a feeling of awe� his daughter Degna recalls. Marconi described himself as the �ardent amateur of electricity�.

 

 

Marconi obtained the first wireless patent, No.12039, on June 2^nd, 1896.     

 

Once in England, his cousin Henry Jameson Davies put him in touch with A. A. Campbell Swinton, a prominent electrical engineer who subsequently provided Marconi with an invitation to meet the engineer-in-chief of the GPO, W. H. Preece, a man forty years his senior. Preece himself was pursuing a form of wireless telegraphy though not with Hertzian waves but with a system of his own - induction.

 

Preece took to Marconi's �open and candid� approach and was impressed by his achievements, consequently appointing one of his lab assistants, ex-naval chief instructor George S. Kemp, to aid the young pioneer. Like the majority of people Marconi was to work with and employ, Kemp was his senior, twenty-two years to be precise.   

Although well aware of his age, the young Italian was single-minded and humble enough to engage a loyal, respecting and determined atmosphere about him. The eminent Preece would be a good guiding friend over the next few years and encouraged Marconi's success in every way.   

 

Throughout 1896, 1897, and 1898 a string of successful experiments were carried out, most notably the Salisbury Plains trials where a distance of thirty-four miles was reached.

 

On 20^th July 1897, The Wireless Telegraph and Signal Company was registered, but no business was forthcoming, and hence many operations and lectures were carried out purely to gain publicity and to attract investment. In May 1898 Marconi approached Sir Henry Hozier, the secretary of Lloyds of London. At this period he �had no official standing and he was still living at his family's expense�. Perhaps Ballycastle's own historian Hugh A. Boyd who was born only ten years after the Rathlin experiment explains it more succinctly: �Marconi was a chancer�. Although of no official standing he was standing with many officials.   

 

Bridging the waters between Rathlin Island and the mainland of Ireland demonstrated yet another facet of wireless to Lloyds, Irish Lights and any other prospective user who may be approached.

   

 

On 4^th June 1898, George Kemp, an agent of the Wireless Telegraph and Signal Company, arrived in Ballycastle and set about the task of establishing a radio link   between the town and the east lighthouse at Ballycarry on Rathlin island.   

Lloyds of London had requested the wireless company to demonstrate how the technology could bridge the waters of the Rathlin Sound and provide an unruffled means of signalling shipping reports.   

Guglielmo Marconi was the young wireless pioneer who was running the signal company and the work carried out by Kemp proved to be an important break for the Marconi Company, which at that stage was only demonstrating its new invention - the wireless telegraph.

 

This was its first commercial contract. Its success added not only to the company's future but also to the area's long history.   

 

In London Marconi conversed with Lloyds and they outlined their problem and instructed for a wireless link. At 1 p.m. on 4 June he left for Ballycastle and by 11 a.m. the next morning he was conversing with Mr. Bryne, Lloyds' man in the area.

 

He studied the plans and surveyed the coasts of the north of Ireland and Rathlin Island. The mast at the lighthouse was 60ft high and 30ft from Lloyds' hut. He left the lighthouse with Mr. Wyse and inspected Rathlin Island, returning at 6.10 p.m.

 

On 10^th June Marconi met Mr. Hough from Lloyds and they arranged that Kemp would try setting up in the coal store with an aerial leading from the coastguard's mast on the top of the cliff, which today is now a car park opposite the Hilsea Guest House. The coal store is also gone with the times.    

The next day the duo visited the island and on return Kemp started working on the coal yard aerial. The aerial that was used by these pioneers was not always the erect vertical apparatus that we are acquainted with today but depended on circumstance and would often be diagonal.  

 The main criterion of the aerial, which was only copper wire, was that it should be suspended at a point high enough to gain an overall height. The height would correspond to the distance of transmission. For example: a vertical wire of 20ft at each end will transmit one mile, 40ft - four miles, 80ft - sixteen miles and so on.   

On Monday 13^th June, Kemp started teaching Mr. Bryne and his sons the Morse code in the hope of getting their help until Lloyds sent someone to take charge of the station. On 22^nd June, he fitted Ballycastle with 50 electricity storage cells for transmission and on the next day he did the same in Rathlin. On 25^th June he instructed Mr. Bryne and his sons on the working of the coal yard station. On 2^nd July he received wire and insulators from London by �the last train� as he says.

  

First Wireless Transmission

Marconi notes in his article in the Journal of the Institute of Electrical Engineers Vol. 28, 1899, that the site only provided 70ft of height and this was ineffective for good transmission in this circumstance. Yet by 5^th July the wireless link was operational and Kemp received a �few V�s� as said from signalman Dunovan and his boys who had been tutored the previous day.

 

So the 5^th July, 1899 was the official date for the first wireless transmission on Irish soil.

 

Within the day though Kemp had received news from London that he was to take all the apparatus to Dun Laoghaire to cover the Kingstown Regatta. He left on the 3 p.m. train on 8^th July. A technical advancement in the science of wireless was not to be made here but Marconi knowing that the race would receive press coverage shrewdly approached the Daily Express and offered his apparatus for assistance. One station would remain on land whilst another would transmit on board the tug The Flying Huntress which would sail alongside the race. The whole operation was an immense success, the Daily Express selling the new gadget on print, Marconi entertaining the Dublin socialites.   

 

 

On 24^th July, Kemp returned to Ballycastle. Accompanying him was Edward Glanville, a young man from Blackrock, who possessed what was known then as a 'senior moderator' (the equivalent of an honours degree) in engineering from Trinity College Dublin. Glanville probably received the post due to Marconi's socialising in the city.   

Glanville received charge of the Rathlin station and was instructed to transmit each day. Kemp, faced with erecting a new aerial, decided to experiment along the cliffs in hope of gaining a stronger reception. Eventually the spire of the Roman Catholic Church was settled for. The wire was suspended from the belfry and led down towards what today is the parochial hall. Although the church was inland it was more elevated than the coastal site and more apt to receive the Hertzian waves transmitted by the 80ft wire that was strung up the side of the East lighthouse, itself on a cliff of about 160ft.   

The site worked yet there was no hut available to allow Kemp to work from, and neither Lloyds nor Marconi were prepared to fund the building of one for the experiment's duration. A new site had to be found. It was back to the cliff head again, a more elevated spot on the property known as Kenmara, belonging to a Mr. Gryer, a solicitor from Ballymoney, who allowed the house on the grounds to be rented out for summer vacations. The house was frequently featured in the Coleraine Chronicle's summer residencies. Kemp noted that the room was granted to him by a lady, and Marconi on arrival at the town confirmed the property was rented by a Mr. Talbot Reed, 1 Hampstead Lane, Highgate, London. It was from a small bedroom at the front of this house that Kemp connected up to an aerial which was suspended over the cliff side and connected to the jib of a crane which was loaned from the coal yard for the purpose of a lower mast.

 

Tragic accident

By 22^nd August tragedy had struck. News came from Rathlin that Glanville was dead at the bottom of a cliff. The 24-year-old was known to be interested in geology and had been trying to recover quartz from the side of a cliff to the north of the lighthouse.

 

It appeared that the people on the island had often seen him climbing over the cliffs with a hammer with which he often examined the various strata of the earth, and this no doubt was the cause of his accident.

 

His death was mentioned in the Dublin newspapers and the next day his father arrived in Ballycastle to take the youth back home. Marconi no doubt attended the funeral as he was still in Dublin at the time. The Irish News noted he was giving a lecture with the Right Rev. Monsignor Melloy DD, B.Sc., in the Lecture Hall of the Royal Dublin Society at 3.15 on 23^rd August, to be repeated in the Royal University Buildings.   

Kemp erected a new 109ft mast on the cliff on 24^th August, 104 ft in a northerly direction from Kenmara House, and signals were sent from a child�s bedroom at the north of the house. On 26^th August he went to Rathlin to adjust the system while Mr. Bryne remained on the mainland receiving and sending transmissions. Ballycarry was left in the charge of Mr. Dunovan and his sons, who surely must have been relieved at the prospect of wireless tapping in comparison to pigeon catching. Yet by the next year, 1899, pigeon post resumed for this route!

 

Kemp�s return to Rathlin took four hours to cross the very dangerous piece of water and he caught a terrible cold.

 

Wireless conquers fog

The next day a dense fog was present; the very obstacle that Ballycarry, Lloyds and Kemp sought to overcome. Kemp's work rose to the occasion, ten ships were reported to Lloyds, Mr. Bryne sent a report to them to detail the day's work and the weather conditions.   

 

For the next couple of days Kemp suffered. He took to bed with neuralgia and fever, a direct result of the four-hour ordeal at sea. The bad weather persisted until 1^st September. Marconi had arrived on 29^th August, the eve of the Oul Lammas Fair. This signalled the end of the demonstration; the wireless had conquered the elements. Marconi had no real need to visit the experiment but being the committed scientist and the fact he was already in Ireland and that this was his first commercial demonstration, logic would have prevailed to gauge the scene himself. Glanville's death was Marconi's first tragedy, an outward sign of interest in the man's work would certainly have been necessary.

After two days of curtailment by the weather, Mr. Wyse�s open-topped sailing boat again left for Rathlin containing the two engineers on what would be their last crossing to the island. The lighthouse was visited and the coasts were observed from the lamp room�s vantage point. While Mr. Dunovan packed up the apparatus Kemp took Marconi to the cliff where Glanville had lost his life.   

 

On return to the mainland the pair called on those that had aided in the wireless proceedings. These included the Rev. John Conway PP who had allowed the use of his belfry and Messrs Alex and John Nicholl the proprietors of the local water mill and saw-yard who would presumably have provided mast material and spars to keep the wire off the cliff rock. The owners of the property involved were also thanked.

 

         

Marconi caught the train for London on 2^nd September. Kemp took down the mast and returned all the stores to the Antrim Arms Hotel. On 8^th September he left, taking the train route to the capital via Belfast and Fleetwood. The next day he noted in his diary:

 

 

�Arrived in Mark Lane after a very successful demonstration. I managed to work under the most peculiar instructions ever given to me. Last year the whole of the GPO's skill was put on to a similar job. I was sent to do this without any assistance in this case and had to instruct all those who helped me. I went to Leytonstone for a few days' rest.�

 

   Residence for both men was provided by the Antrim Arms Hotel, which was owned at the time by Elizabeth Hunter. Kemp was said to be a cheery soul and gave great spirit to the music sessions that took place in the hotel in the evening time.   

At the time the hotel employed a Mary McCormick who went on to marry a Johnny Cecil from Rathlin Island. Cecil's grandson Tommy was pictured standing at the ruins of the Lloyds' signalling station. It was this Johnny Cecil who laboured for Kemp and was the man to recover Glanville's body. Mary McCormick had the task the following year of running meals to the transmitter men who worked at the small cottage towards Fair Head. This transmitter operation was William Preece's induction system.

   

Preece's induction system

Preece a man then in his mid-sixties had, over the years, experimented with electromagnetic waves, or induction as a form of wireless. Two equal lengths of electrified cable set parallel, the width being equal to the length was found to be capable of sending and receiving electromagnetic waves in a slow form of Morse code.   

A failed attempt across the Irish sea did not thwart the GPO man's enthusiasm and when in 1899 R. Robertson of Glasgow, who held the lease of Rathlin's mineral rights and currently exporting limestone asked the GPO for a telegraph line to be installed, implying that Irish Lights, Lloyds, Mr. Gage and himself would all contribute to the cost, William Preece saw his opportunity. A contract was drawn up and the system finally commenced on 29^th January 1901 with Lloyds, Robertson and the GPO the only participants.

 

Commemorative plaque

A small cottage towards Fair Head was used as a mainland station and it was to here that Mary McCormick brought William Preece his meals. Subsequently though the system's unreliability brought the contract to a standstill and it was removed in 1903. The cottage itself was renamed after the most successful wirelessman - Marconi - by the local community, and in 1955 a plaque was placed on the cottage by the local council outlining the Italian's successes quoting inaccurate dates and facts.   

In 1964 the plaque was removed and in 1973 the record was put straight with a commemorative erection at the 15ft Granny Rock which is close to the old coal yard where the initial transmission took place. Kemp's skill stood the advancement of science.   

 

In 1958 the Radio Society of Great Britain attempted to recreate Kemp's link using their own contemporary equipment. Ballycastle could not be reached from Ballycarry even though Australia was being contacted.

 

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT: Most of the material for this item was gleaned and edited by George McHugh, GI4SRQ, from an article by Richard McCaughan in the November 1994 edition of �NEW ULSTER� The Journal of the Ulster Society; and some of the facts about Marconi are from an item (in 1994 on the Packet Radio system) by Stan Casperd, G3XON.