A native of Broughton in Lancashire, England, Frederic Newton Gisborne was one of the pioneering engineers who “wired the world” with submarine cables. He directed the laying of the first submarine cable on the floor of the Gulf of St. Lawrence and put into place the early arrangements for the first successful transatlantic cable. The record of his life and work provides clear evidence of the seemingly impossible problems and personal perils that Canada’s telecommunications pioneers had to overcome.

Gisborne, educated privately in England, took a special interest in electricity, civil engineering, and related scientific subjects. At seventeen, he embarked on a world tour that gave him an appreciation of the great distances separating the world’s continents. After coming to Canada in 1845, he quickly took an active interest in the rapidly developing field of telegraphy, realizing that this communication system provided a means of linking the continents.

In 1832 Samuel Morse, a graduate of Yale, had conceived the idea of transmitting messages, or signals, by means of electrical impulses transmitted by wire. Within a couple of years he had completed the first working model of his telegraph system.

After Morse’s system had been put into commercial operation, courses in telegraphy were offered at various institutions. Gisborne enrolled in one of these courses in Montreal and ranked the highest in his class. In August 1847 he accepted a position as head of the Quebec office of the Montreal Telegraph Company.

Later that year he joined in the formation of the British North America Electric Telegraph Association (BNAETA) and became its superintendent. Acting on behalf of the Association, Gisborne visited New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, hoping to persuade the governments there to participate in the construction of a telegraph line from Halifax to Quebec. Despite his continuing efforts that included, on one occasion, snowshoeing more than one hundred miles to the St. Lawrence River dragging all his belongings behind him on a toboggan, he and his colleagues in the Association had, by 1849, completed only a single line from Quebec City to Rivière-du-Loup. That spring he became the superintendent and chief operator of the telegraph lines owned by the Nova Scotia government.

At that time Gisborne was aware of the difficulties that had been encountered in the laying of cable in salt water. He knew that Morse had laid an underwater cable in New York Harbour in 1842 and that Ezra Cornell had laid one under the Hudson River three years later. In both cases salt water had quickly corroded the underwater cables. Gisborne knew that this problem had to be solved, especially since Nova Scotia is almost entirely surrounded by salt water. Gisborne was convinced that, if a solution could be found, Newfoundland and Halifax could be linked by submarine cable. He was authorized by the Government of Nova Scotia to seek the support of Newfoundland for such a project. 

Gisborne's dream of linking continents was fulfilled in 1866 when the Great Eastern successfully completed the laying of the first transatlantic cable. Robert Dudley's "Arrival of the Transatlantic Cable" linking Ireland to Hearts Content, in Trinity Bay, Newfoundland, captures the event {[ Royal Ontario Museum].

Gisborne proceeded with the installation of telegraph lines in Newfoundland. By early September 1851, he and his colleagues had completed the line from St. John’s to Cape Ray through more than three hundred miles of exceedingly difficult terrain, none of which had been previously explored.

Soon after he had embarked on this challenging project, he was abandoned by the six men who had initially worked with him. They were replaced by four Indians. One died and two deserted him. Finally in early December 1851 he and his exhausted companion returned to St. John’s. But Gisborne’s harrowing experience in Newfoundland had not discouraged him in the least. He was more than ever determined to link Newfoundland and Ireland by cable. Within a few weeks he went to New York and later to London to arrange the necessary financing for the transatlantic project.

In England Gisborne met a British engineer, John Watkins Brett, who was actively involved in experimentation and development of submarine telegraphy. Brett made an initial contribution to Gisborne’s project as had several businessmen in New York City. Thus, when he returned to St. John’s, he was able to persuade the Newfoundland legislature to grant exclusive rights to telegraph construction in Newfoundland for 30 years to his new company, financed through his business contacts in both New York and England.

By late November 1852, a submarine cable was laid on the floor of the St. Lawrence from Carleton Head, Prince Edward Island to Cape Tormentine, New Brunswick. Using machinery and installation methods developed largely by Gisborne himself, it was the first successful submarine cable in North America.

Having completed this project, Gisborne was convinced that he could now complete his great transatlantic submarine project. He organized a company in New York for this purpose, receiving confirmation that the necessary capital would be provided. With this assurance he went to Prince Edward Island, acquired all the cable rights there, and then proceeded to Newfoundland to superintend the completion of the telegraph line from St. John’s to Cape Ray.

While involved in this difficult task, Gisborne learned that a disagreement had occurred in New York City and that the financing on which he had relied would not be provided. Despite major financial crises that almost destroyed him financially, Gisborne struggled on. Again he went to New York. Again he established new financial arrangements, this time with Cyrus West Field who, although he was in the paper business, became greatly interested in Gisborne’s visionary transatlantic cable project.

Field organized a consortium and went to Newfoundland with Gisborne. In April 1854, the legislature of Newfoundland incorporated the New York, Newfoundland and London Telegraph Company. Gisborne arranged the transfer to this new company of telegraph rights in Newfoundland and Prince Edward Island and acquired similar rights in the state of Maine. It was agreed that Gisborne would be the chief engineer of the new company. He finally completed the laying of the cable from Cape Ray to Cape Breton in July 1856 and the line from Newfoundland to Nova Scotia by October of that same year.

Gisborne now had good reason to believe that the transatlantic cable project would finally be completed. Soon, however, when he came to the conclusion that his associates in the endeavour planned to cheat him, he removed himself completely from the project. Thus, when the first permanently successful transatlantic submarine cable was completed in 1866, Gisborne was not directly involved. But his ideas were, along with financier Cyrus Field, whom Gisborne had interested in this project in 1854.

When Gisborne returned to St. John’s, Newfoundland, in May 1857, he was received triumphantly. There he returned to prospecting for minerals and explored Newfoundland’s west coast from Cape Ray to the Strait of Belle Isle, securing financing for the development of two mineral projects. In the following decade he was involved in a variety of economic development efforts for Newfoundland. He engaged in similar activities in the 1870s in Nova Scotia, where he took a special interest in the development of coal deposits. Unfortunately, he again suffered major financial losses.

In 1879 Gisborne was appointed superintendent of the Telegraph and Signal Services for the Government of Canada. His first major undertaking was the reorganization of the telegraph system in British Columbia. When he had successfully completed this, he turned his attention to telegraph lines in Alberta and Saskatchewan. There he personally supervised the construction of new lines and the rebuilding of “pioneer” lines.

One of Gisborne’s major achievements as superintendent of Canada’s Telegraph and Signal Service was the installation of a cable along the Gulf of the Saint Lawrence for the transmission of information concerning fisheries, weather forecasting, and marine accidents. In the midst of all this work he participated in the founding in 1882 of the Royal Society of Canada.

When Gisborne died in 1892, he was planning yet another project. This time it was a transpacific cable. Death prevented him from contributing to its completion as he had to the successful trans-atlantic cable project.

Today, Frederic Newton Gisborne is remembered as a far-sighted, immensely creative, and courageous engineer and entrepreneur. He contributed not only to the advancement of telecommunications and the development of the coal industry in Cape Breton but also to the establishment of firm foundations for applied science and engineering in Canada.