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Our cargo ship, the City of Bedford, bound for St John, New Brunswick, in eastern Canada, was breasting the dark heavy waves in the middle of the North Atlantic when our chief officer tapped a position on the big marine chart and said: "It beggars belief – how that fellow Halpin pin-pointed the place where the broken telegraph went down and then fished it up."
He was referring to one of the most extraordinary feats in the career of a mariner from Wicklow town, Robert Halpin.
He was one of the significant seafarers of the 19th century, playing a pivotal role in connecting continents with submarine telegraph cables. Messages sent along these electric cables effectively revolutionised contact and communications between places thousands of miles apart. What had taken weeks for news or instructions to arrive by sea only took the time for the telegraphed messages to be decoded from Morse code.
The first big challenge in the far-reaching transformation of global inter-connection was linking Europe to North America. Some unsuccessful attempts had been made, but in 1865 the massive vessel Great Eastern was converted from a passenger ship to a cable-layer. The vastly experienced Halpin was appointed first officer. The cable, 2,600 miles long and weighing 6,000 tons, was stored in the ship's tanks. One end of the cable was secured at Valentia in Co Kerry and the ship set off, slowly paying out the cable, letting it drop to the ocean floor far below. It proved to be an exacting task on a moving sea, and midway across the cable snapped and sank to the ocean bed.
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Despite this disappointment the gigantic vessel set out again the following year with Halpin again as chief officer. To great celebrations it succeeded in physically connecting the continents when it placed the end of the cable in a place called Heart’s Content, Newfoundland.
Then Halpin took on the daunting assignment of trying to retrieve the broken cable of the previous attempt. His navigational skills, honed during a lifetime of seafaring, stood to him. He located the exact spot where the cable sank far below.
During the American civil war, as captain of several ships, he made a lot of money running the gauntlet of the Union ships blockading the ports of the Confederate states
For two weeks the huge vessel moved about slowly, fishing for the cable with a huge grappling hook.
Then it happened. The severed cable was discovered. It was carefully and laboriously hauled aboard. It was connected to the new cable in the ship’s hold to form a second transatlantic cable.
Halpin’s feats were celebrated internationally.
The youngest of 13 children whose family owned the Bridge House tavern in Wicklow, he became fascinated by stories of adventure in strange lands and seas by the mariners who drank in the inn.
He went to sea at the age of 11, first serving on sailing ships and then embracing the advent of steam-powered vessels.
He proved to be a hardy and indomitable character, enduring shipwreck and all the hardships of seafaring in that era. He rose to command ships in his twenties.
During the American civil war, as captain of several ships, he made a lot of money running the gauntlet of the Union ships blockading the ports of the Confederate states. He brought in arms and food and loaded his ships with cotton. It was a risky enterprise. He was eventually caught and put on trial by the Union authorities; he was acquitted due to lack of evidence.
After his first cable-laying exploits he was promoted to captain of the Great Eastern in 1869. He was nicknamed “Mr Cable” as he pursued a profitable enterprise stretching transoceanic telegraph cables across various parts of the globe.
With a fleet of cable ships, he connected France to Canada, Suez to India, Madras to Malaya and the Dutch East Indies and Australia to New Zealand.
For a person who had escaped serious injury during an adventurous life, his own end seemed bizarre
In 1874, he laid a cable to connect Portugal to Madeira, the Cape Verde islands and Brazil. He would lay no less than 41,800 kilometres in an achievement that was seen as one of the most significant factors in advancing global communications.
He was awarded the highest honours in Britain, France, Brazil and other countries.
After his marriage in 1874 he retired from the sea, returned to Wicklow and with his accumulated wealth, built Tinakilly House, now a well-known hotel.
He became chairman of the Wicklow Harbour Board and deputy lieutenant of the county.
For a person who had escaped serious injury during an adventurous life, his own end seemed bizarre. While trimming his toenails he pierced his skin. It was before the development of antibiotics and he developed gangrene from which he died in 1894 at the age of 58.
His funeral cortege was the largest seen in the county.
Some years later the granite obelisk honouring his memory was erected in Wicklow town.
There is a display of artefacts related to Robert Halpin in the National Maritime Museum in Dún Laoghaire.
Perhaps the most fitting tribute to his achievements is the Halpin Centre for Research and Innovation opened in 2012 at the National Maritime College in Cork.