Transatlantic Cable Ensemble

We visited the cable station in Heart’s Content, Newfoundland, Canada, in August 2023. This was a nice detour of approximately 100km and 1h50 on our way from Gander to Saint John’s. Heart’s Content is a nice village and the station is right along the main road, easy to find and park by. On one side of the road stand the two buildings of the station itself ; opposite side of the road and immediately by the sea, a tiny memorial garden has been set at the very place where the cable was coming on shore. A long plaque with words in both English and morse code shows the way of the cable from the shore to the station. There are a few benches and free flowing potable water – we had a nice picnic there.

This station is the American end of the first cable laid across the Atlantic for morse communication, the other end being on Valentia Island, Ireland. This cable allowed the first modern and fast communication between Europe and America and started operations in 1866 for a period of 99 years At that time it was seen as the “eighth wonder of the world”. There is a nice introduction movie at the station, explaining why this was a clear technological breakthrough. The cable itself is 4000+ km long ; the floor of the ocean had to be surveyed and mapped first, to determine the best possible path for the cable ; the entire cable was loaded …

In readiness for its likely addition to Ireland’s T List, we paid a visit to the Transatlantic Cable Station on Valentia Island in June 2022. A simple review of the visit isn’t going to take very long as, in all honesty, there isn’t a great deal to see, and what there is isn’t that exciting! Perhaps of more interest to WHS travelers is its history towards nomination - informed by the visit itself and some pre and post visit investigations up to the site’s addition to the Irish T List in Feb 2023. 

At the time we were visiting “blind” regarding what might be proposed. The Canadian element at Heart’s Content Newfoundland hadn’t officially been added to its T List on the UNESCO Web site either, even though the Canadian Government Web site had it listed with a date of 20 Dec 2017 - presumably it/UNESCO were waiting until both ends could be added at the same time. The descriptions there implied that only the 2 cable station “ensembles” (whatever that meant) were to be included using Crits ii and iv. (“The Heart’s Content/Valentia Cable Station ensemble are outstanding monuments representing the remarkable advances in communication technology during the mid to late 19th century” and “The Heart’s Content/Valentia Cable Station ensemble is a well preserved and outstanding example of a telecommunications site”).

This was called into question when we picked up a nice brochure in Valentia for a “Transatlantic Cable Trail”. See …

The inclusion of the Transatlantic Cable Ensemble: Valentia-Heart’s Content in Ireland’s updated Tentative List brings a bit more spice for WH travellers to this corner of Ireland, County Kerry. It gives you something to do while waiting for a boat to Skellig Michael. I have been there twice, both for that reason. Valentia Island lies a 2.5h drive from Cork Airport on roads where you always have to be on guard – they are busy and narrow, and there always is some goat fair going on at Killarney or Killorglin; I hated the drive both times.

During my first visit in 2019, there still was very little information about which spots on Valentia the TWHS would cover. The cable station was the best bet, but it wasn’t accessible then as it was in private use and I had to make do with a couple of small memorials across the street. One is a slab of stone displaying the text of a telegram sent via the cable during WWI, another is a black-and-white pole (symbolizing a cable?), and the third is a commemorative stone bollard (its partner stands 3,071 km away at the other end of the ocean).

In June 2022, I visited Newfoundland as part of my East Canada road trip. It would have been an excellent chance to see the other end of the cable: Heart’s Content, a possible 11th WHS in the East Canada “cluster”, and the 4th WHS in Newfoundland. But it takes quite a …