Australia - New Caledonia.
Cable operation
.


Aspects of the cable operation reviewd here are:

Usage

Very little information is obtainable with reference to the traffic over the cable between Queensland and New Caledonia. It would appear, however, that from the date on which the line was opened - 19 October 1893 - till the close of that month (a period of 12 days) 61 messages were forwarded to New Caledonia and 53 were received from that place. These included Government messages which pass over the cable free and paid cablegrams. The bulk of the paid messages were sent from and received by New South Wales and the Government messages sent from and received by Queenaland as included in these are the meteorological communications which pass daily between here and the French settlement. Only one message was sent from Victoria. (The Queensland Times, 16 November 1893).

Two scarce example of the usage of the cable are shown below:


NC-EO-5: NSW delivery envelope with TELEGRAM IMMEDIATE as heading.
Has ms. CABLE and Noumea with three 1d violet Centennial issue stamps cancelled Sydney 2 December 1894.
That date is about 13 months after the cable had been opened.

Perhaps the cable delivery form was being mailed to Noumea because of a serious interruption to communications.
Sailing time between Noumea and Sydney in those days was 3-4 days.


IAE-DC-1: Noumea to Sydney
(rare one line Telegraph Branch date stamp of 9 October 1922).
Used 29 years less 10 days after the cable had been opened.

 

Interruptions.

On 1 November 1897, a major break occurred in the cable which could not be repaired until 19 January 1898. The Sydney Evening News of 17 November noted:

"the inconvenience caused to the commercial community by the interrupted cable service to Noumea. The cable broke a couple of weeks ago between the French colony and Australia. The company did not possess a repairing steamer and thus were unable to have the break remedied. They vainly importuned the New Zealand Government to loan them a vessel capable of effecting repairs to the broken cable. The New South Wales Government, who had contributed to the subsidy, considered something should be done towards having communication speedily restored. One possibiity was to bring pressure to bear upon New Zealand. Mr. Cook, the Postmaster-General for NSW, noted that the most suitable steamer for the purpose - the Sherrard Osborne - was at Singapore. He recognised the importance of uninterrupted communication over the line in question, but the matter was one that more directly concerned the deputation than the Government, for as long as the cable was not working, the Government paid no subsidy, so they actually saved by the present state of affairs. That, however, was a small matter when they came to consider the business done, which was on the increase. It would probably take some time to effect repairs, but he would see what could be done in the direction mentioned by the deputation". The inoperability of the cable required a necessary deduction to be made from the subsidy. The returns were not however sufficient to enable a reduction in the annual subsidy of £2,000.

The representative of the Compaign Française informed the Queensland Telegraph Department that he had received a wire from his company stating that, after much difficulty, they had made arrangements with the Eastern Telegraph Company for one of their boats, now at Singapore, to come here and repair the cable, but the boat cannot arrive before the 18th November".

Subsequent interruptions of some significance included:

February 1898 an interruption between Gomen and Noumea.
February 1904 an interruption between Gomen and Noumea due to bad weather.
March 1906  
May 1906. a hurricane interrupted the land line between Gomen and Noumea.
15 February 1911 an interruption for nearly one week.
7 August to 7 September 1922 A major interruption to the cable between Bundaberg and New Caledonia.

On 27 September 1904, the Pacific Cable repair ship, the Irish arrived in Moreton Bay from Suva en toute to New Caledonia to repair the badly broken Bundaberg-New Caledonia cable. The Acting Deputy Postmaster General received a telegram in mid-October 1904 from the Postmaster at Bundaberg stating that "the Irish is well. Both ends of the cable are buoyed and testing satisfactorily The intermediate cable was being recovered. The break was due to a submarine landslide which recontoured the sea bottom to the extent of one hundred fathoms".