History of the Atlantic Cable & Undersea Communications
from the first submarine cable of 1850 to the worldwide fiber optic network

Mediterranean Watercolours

Henry Clifford in 1865, from The Atlantic Telegraph book (above) and from Henry O'Neil's sketch for the newsletter published on the Great Eastern (below)

Henry Clifford (1821-1905) was a mechanical engineer, the cousin of Sir Charles Bright’s wife; Bright was instrumental in laying the early Atlantic cables. Introduced to the cable business through his friendship with Bright, Clifford served as an engineer on all the Atlantic cable expeditions from 1857 to 1866. He designed the paying-out machinery which was successfully used on Great Eastern in 1865 and 1866, and worked for the Telegraph Construction and Maintenance Company (Telcon) until 1894.

While not engaged in engineering duties, Clifford took the opportunity to draw and paint scenes of cableships and surrounding scenery, beginning in 1857 with views of the Agamemnon.

The first of this group of four 19th century watercolours of the Mediterranean is titled in pencil on the mount “Marabut”, and is signed in ink “H. Clifford”. A pencil note on the mount reads: “Marabut, 4 P.M. Sep 21 1861.”

Marabut is on the Mediterranean coast in the Straits of Gibraltar, and according to the 1898 biography of Sir Charles Bright (Vol. II, p.3), in the latter part of 1861 Clifford represented Glass Elliot & Co for the laying of the Malta-Alexandria cable. As Marabut lies on the approach to the site of this cable, it is a reasonable assumption that Clifford painted this watercolour while on board the cable ship Rangoon on the way to its destination.

The September date on the watercolour means that it was made on the second expedition for this cable; for more information see this page.

Thanks to Xavier A. Rivera for help with this section. Finding Xavier’s photograph of a dolomite limestone quarry near Ceuta led me to ask him to help locate the Marabut watercolour, and he provided much useful information, including an 1883 drawing showing the elevation along the coast near Ceuta (below). I have superimposed this drawing on a detail from a 1900 map of Ceuta, oriented with South at the top to correspond with the elevation.

Ceuta is an autonomous city of Spain on the coast of North Africa across the Strait from Gibraltar. The location of the subject of the watercolour is at the right side of the map, near Punta Bermeja.

Xavier also provided a topographical map of the Bay of Ceuta; this detail shows the nature of the terrain around Punta Bermeja:

On the back of the mount for the Marabut watercolour is a photograph of the landing of the shore end of the 1871 Port Darwin (Australia) to Java cable. As with the Malta-Alexandria cable, this cable was laid by Telcon (the successors to Glass, Elliot & Co.), but it’s not known if Henry Clifford sailed on this expedition.

The next watercolour is dated Nov 2nd 187?, and is of the island of Pantellaria (modern Pantelleria), an Italian possession located in the Strait of Sicily between Sicily and Tunisia.

The partial signature on this watercolour (initials H.H., last name beginning with C, G, O or Q) leads to a cable connection for this and the following watercolour of the Pharos at Alexandria, which were almost certainly painted on the 1870 Malta-Alexandria cable expedition.

The engineer on this voyage was Harold Hawksworth Gibson, the grandson of Henry Clifford's old business partner, who had started working for Clifford at Telcon inj 1870 and sailed on two Mediterranean expeditions that year [Gibson-Clifford archive]. The Malta-Alexandria cable was laid by Telcon for the Anglo-Mediterranean Telegraph Company using CS Chiltern and CS Belgian, and was handed over to the company on 22 November 1870 [date from The Manual of Submarine Telegraph Companies].

The correspondence of the dates and names makes it a reasonable assumption that the watercolour date is Nov 2nd 1870, and the signature H.H. Gibson.

Compare the Pantellaria watercolour with the woodcut from the Illustrated London News, below. A similar two-masted ship appears at the tip of the island in both images.

The next watercolour is of the Pharos at Alexandria, Egypt. It is titled in pencil on the reverse: “The Pharé, Alexandria”, and has a partial caption (“...ré”) which appears to be in the same hand as the Pantellaria painting.

This c.1800 illustration of Alexandria shows the Pharos in the distance; the scene had hardly changed by the time of the watercolour, about 1870.

Alexandria Harbour
Placemarker shows Pharos
View Larger Map

The location of the subject of the fourth watercolour is at present unknown, but the style of the sails on the small boats is similar to that in the watercolour The Pharé above. This piece was perhaps unfinished, as the foreground has little or no detail.

Map showing Gibraltar, Pantelleria, Malta, Alexandria

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