Since the separate British companies used differing systems no direct electrical connection was possible between them or consequently overseas; foreign traffic therefore involved transcription, i.e. manual ‘re-writing’, just as the original German-Austrian Telegraph Union did. However by the year of the continent-wide conventions, 1855, the European states commonly used the basic American telegraph for international traffic, adopting what came in time to be called ‘Continental Morse’ for messages. This code or cipher was markedly different from ‘American Morse’ in allowing for diacritical marks and other complexities.

 

Continental - The continental telegraph system remained electrically incompatible with British domestic telegraph apparatus. However, the Submarine Telegraph Company from 1855 maintained a direct electrical connection between its offices in London and Paris and Brussels using the American key-and-writer. It had previous used the two-needle instrument over the same circuits. It also connected with the Magnetic’s circuits at their common office in Cornhill, London, by which transcription from all of that concern’s country-wide offices could be managed internally; they united head offices at Threadneedle Street in 1857. Transcribed messages off the Electric company's circuits for the ‘French’ route were received on account by hand from Founders’ Court.

The Electric company’s cables to Holland became operational in 1853 with a direct electric connection between London and Amsterdam via The Hague using its own needle instruments. Little or no transcription traffic was henceforth sent via the Submarine company’s French and Belgian cables. Transcription from the British to the continental system then initially took place at Amsterdam; but in 1854 Siemens American inkers or writers and in 1855 Varley’s double-keys were installed at Founders’ Court for submarine traffic. The Company now had direct electrical connection with all of the continental and eastern circuits from London, reducing the need for error-inducing transcription of messages by foreign clerks. These were the only circuits on which the Electric used Morse code, albeit its Continental variety; on its domestic circuits it worked Bain code.

International messages were a major source of income – not being subject to as much public and press scrutiny as domestic traffic. There were contractual relationships between the continental cable companies and the telegraph companies. The Magnetic had sole rights to use the Submarine company’s cables to France, Belgium and Germany, but only benefited from the domestic segment of the message, the Submarine company having the lion’s share. The Electric had its own cables (formerly the International company’s) to Holland – so profitable that they were dubbed the “sheet anchor” of the business in the late 1850s. It also contracted, along with the Indo-European Telegraph Company, to use the new Norderney cable for public messages to Europe and the Far East; Julius Reuter retaining the rights for news messages. The new Norderney cable was already paying 19% on its capital for Reuter in 1868.

The original charges of the Submarine Telegraph Company in December 1851 for a twenty word message to Paris were:- from Dover 15s 0d; from London 17s 6d; from Birmingham, Brighton, Cheltenham, Coventry, Gloucester, Newmarket, Norwich, Oxford, Portsmouth and Southampton, £1 0s; and from Chester, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Holyhead, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Nottingham, Sheffield and York £1 2s 6d. Apart from messages originating in Dover these were transcribed in London from the circuits of the Electric company. Messages were being transmitted to arrive the same day from London and Liverpool to Paris, Havre, Vienna, Trieste, Hamburg and Ostend. The longest circuit available from England, with the perils of transcription, at the end of 1851 was to Cracow in Austria.

In April 1854 the Submarine Telegraph Company adopted the following pricing for twenty word messages by way of Calais, or twenty-five words through Ostend, the minimum message lengths:

Amsterdam……………………..16s 0d
Antwerp………………………….12s 0d
Berlin……………………..………22s 0d
Bordeaux………………………..16s 6d
Brussels………………………….12s 0d
Budapest…………………………24s 0d
Copenhagen…………………….24s 6d
Dantzic……………………………24s 0d
Dresden………………………….20s 0d
Frankfort-am-Main…………24s 6d
Genoa.……………………………24s 0d
Hamburg………………………..22s 0d
Havre…………………………….12s 0d
Lemberg…………………………26s 0d
Marseilles……………………….18s 6d
Milan………………………….....20s 0d
Paris………………………………12s 0d
Prague……………………………20s 0d
Rotterdam………………………14s 0d
Trieste……………………………22s 0d
Turin……………………………..22s 0d
Vienna……………………………22s 0d

At this time no tariff was available to the southern Italian states, to Rome and Naples for example. Multiples of the charges for twenty or twenty-five words were applied up to one hundred words.

It was not until the following year, 1855, that Rome at 20s 0d and Naples at 40s 0d, as well as Madrid at 28s 8d, were added to its network.

The Submarine company stated that its share of all these prices from stations in Great Britain was 8s 0d for the segment to either Calais or Ostend, the balance going to the state owned circuits in Europe that the message had to pass through. Repetition, the repeating back of the message to the sender as a guarantee of accuracy was charged double-rate to France and one-and- a-half-rate to the rest of Europe. Delivery was also extra in France, but free elsewhere.

Just as in Britain the course of continental wires was complex: the traffic from Paris to Milan in 1854 was worked by way of Brussels, Berlin, Vienna and Trieste. With the need of several transcriptions a message occupied twenty-four hours in transit. Milan was then a city of the Austrian empire.

 

In June 1858 the Electric & International Company’s Continental Rates for a twenty word message from London via The Hague were:

Amsterdam……………….…..6s 0d
Antwerp………………….…….7s 6d
Berlin……………………………11s 0d
Brussels…………………………7s 6d
Bremen………………………….8s 6d
Christiania……………………..18s 0d
Constantinople……..….…….33s 6d
Copenhagen……………..……12s 0d
Genoa…………………..……….15s 6d
Hamburg…………………..…..10s 0d
Königsberg…………………….13s 6d
Malta…………………………….31s 0d
Memel…………………………..13s 6d
Odessa………………………….31s 6d
Paris……………………………..11s 0d
Riga………………………………25s 6d
Rotterdam……………………..6s 0d
St Petersburg …………………31s 6d
Stockholm……………………..18s 0d
Trieste…………………………..12s 0d
Vienna…………………………..12s 0d

During the mid-1860s the message costs to India were £5 1s for twenty words by the Ottoman Turkish route. Of this the Electric Telegraph Company shared 3s 6d, the German-Austrian Telegraph Union 10s 6d, the Ottoman telegraphs £1 8s and the British India government cables and telegraphs £2 19s.

The Magnetic and Submarine companies charged exactly the same rate from London to Calcutta, receiving a share of 2s 6d from messages out of London and 3s 6d for messages from country stations.

The India rate was fixed by the London government. 

For messages to the Continent addresses were generally charged for in 1859, they were free only in Denmark, Norway and Sweden. Costs via Belgium were based on a fifteen word message; via France on twenty-five words including five words for the address. There was an additional flat rate charge where the message had to be forwarded to a station of a railway telegraph rather than to one on the state-owned circuits. All porterage had to be pre-paid. English language was acceptable to nearly all continental destinations, the understandable exceptions being small, rural offices. Commercial cipher was forbidden to the German states but otherwise allowed at special cost. Repetition for accuracy and pre-paid return messages were all allowed.

The Submarine Telegraph Company reported in 1860 to the Government that its share of the message cost, that is just from Britain to the coast of France, had reduced from 8s 0d on twenty words in 1854 to 5s 0d in 1859, and to 2s 6d from London and 3s 6d from the rest of the country in 1860. Its revenue on its circuits to the coasts of Belgium, Hanover and Denmark was 6s 0d on twenty words. Of course, to these charges had to be added the expensive segment within Europe.

However, as with domestic telegraphy, foreign message costs from the United Kingdom fell markedly during the 1860s. The Submarine Telegraph Company in January 1862 introduced a simplified tariff to Continental Europe charging 7s 6d for twenty words inclusive of addresses to most countries, additional words were charged at 4½d each. For more distant cities in Eastern Europe it charged 8s 0d for twenty words. Its competitors in Britain fell into line with similar reductions.

As an additional measure of security and efficiency the repeater devised by C F Varley of the Electric company in 1855 with automatic repetition (i.e. direct point-to-point working) was introduced into the longest overland continental circuits, initially through northern Europe to St Petersburg, and then on the dedicated lines to Turkey and India, thus avoiding the perils of transcription by non-English speaking operators. This also enabled the introduction of automatic telegraphy with tape perforators, rotary transmitters and fast receivers on the Indo-European company’s long circuits.

The United Kingdom company eventually, in 1868, contracted to use the Great Northern Telegraph Company of Copenhagen’s newly-laid cable between Jutland in Denmark, and Newbiggin in Northern England; giving it access to the Continent through Danish state circuits. In the following year it also connected with the Great Northern’s Norwegian cable at Peterhead in Scotland. The Company transcribed the messages from its American and Hughes circuits at its offices in Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Aberdeen on to Wheatstone’s automatic telegraph used by the Great Northern.

Continental Morse code was hence used by all of the British telegraph companies for their foreign traffic. 

Through these connections it was possible by 1868 to communicate from virtually any telegraph office in Britain and Ireland with any office on the continent of Europe, and to the Levant and to India.

Intercontinental - The American cables of 1866 between Valentia in Ireland and Newfoundland, off Canada, connecting to the United States; and the later Mediterranean and Indian cable companies, were corporately and operationally independent of the domestic telegraph companies and did not contribute directly to their income; the domestic companies earning only from their inland segment.

There were no direct electrical circuits between the domestic companies’ wires and the intercontinental cables, all messages were transcribed at the cable companies' offices in London. A dedicated leased-line ran from London to the cable-end for America, crossing the Irish Sea using the London & South-of-Ireland Direct Telegraph Company's cable from Abermawr in Wales to Wexford in Ireland. A private wire was leased of the Electric Telegraph Company by the Falmouth, Gibraltar & Malta Telegraph Company in 1870 from the common office of all the Mediterranean and Indian cable companies at 66 Old Broad Street, London to Penzance in Cornwall, where it connected with the Malta company’s  own 10 mile long line to the cable-end of the intercontinental eastern circuits at Porthcurno.

Of the domestic telegraph companies, the Magnetic’s board of directors, its engineers and its management were intimately involved in the promotion and creation of the world-wide underwater cable network, as befitted their initial connection with the original Submarine Telegraph Company.

But there was a little secret revealed only in the composition of the scientific commission appointed by Parliament to investigate the failure of the first Atlantic cable in 1858. Its report and recommendations on insulation and instruments submitted in 1863 laid the foundation for all subsequent oceanic cables: the members were Cromwell Varley, Charles Wheatstone, Edwin Clark, Latimer Clark, George Bidder (all connections of the Electric company), Douglas Galton (an army engineer for the Government), William Fairbairn (an eminent engineer and a director of the Universal company) and George Saward (for the Atlantic Telegraph Company). It had been the Electric’s knowledge that had quietly rescued the American cable.

On its completion in 1866 the cost for messages over the cables of the Atlantic telegraph between Britain and the United States was one pound (240d) a word! The cost reduced quickly during the first year to four shillings (48d) a word.

On the dissolution of the telegraph companies in 1868 many, if not most, of the best managers, electricians and engineers, and even the more adventurous clerk-operators, left to serve the underwater cable telegraph firms in Britain and overseas rather than take employment with the Post Office. Technical direction of the new national telegraphic system was to be left to a railway signal engineer. 

 

 

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