Commercial Cable Company Atlantic Cables

Cable connections

The Company Weston Waterville	The diagrams summarise the final cable connections for the Commercial Cable Company . Connections to Newfoundland (the other main cable base for other companies) are shown but not the many connections from there by rival companies. Nor are the Western Union connections with Canso, Nova Scotia shown.
	This new version gives numbers that correspond to my numbering on the cable blueprint from the North Somerset Museum archive.

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	As can be seen, Waterville was in many ways the hub with more cables landing there than any other single place.
	Two diversion operations took place on the longest Atlantic cables. In 1909 the oldest two were brought into a station near St John's, Newfoundland. This resulted in an increase in speed and was made possible by the expiry of an "exclusive right" granted to the rival cables when they were laid to St John's. The fact that the Newfoundland authorities then demanded higher "landing fees" than expected may explain why the other two cables were not diverted until 1926[deGogan]. In both diversions the remaining cable from Newfoundland to Nova Scotia was kept in use, in the first case becoming part of the new Newfoundland to New York cables of that time and in the second (1926) case being kept for emergency use.[Bellamy] Close up map of diversions.
	This map, from a Commercial Cable Company advertisement presumably dates from just before 1900. It shows two cables to Weston-super-Mare but this probably reflects the fact that the first cable (21 above) was actually bicored. The only other bicore cable in the CCC system was the Hazel Hill to Boston (Rockport) cable (number 18 above) - also shown as two on this map.

	There are two more maps in the North Somerset Museum archive that show the CCC cables in a fairly final state.
	I have found very little information at all about the CCC station at Le Havre and the two cables that undoubtedly went there. An Internet source implies that all French cables went to Brest[F] but the evidence from CCC is overwhelming that their ones did not. The offices were at 112 Boulevard de Strasbourg - a central location in Le Havre. (Le Havre centre was very heavily bombed in the war but the cable station was presumably restored with everything else.) The George White Archive has pictures of a cable repair at Le Havre in the 1950s. The Le Havre cables were diverted into Dartmouth during WW2. It has been suggested to me that the older one was not reconnected after hostilities ceased.
	The diversions Follow the links to see charts showing the diversion work at St Johns and Waterville. (George White archive.)

(The map used as an underlay above is from a very old atlas in my possession.)

© John Crellin 2009