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

1859 Batavia-Singapore Cable

The 1859 Batavia (Java) to Singapore telegraph cable was manufactured for the Dutch East Indies Government by R.S. Newall & Company, with core supplied by the Gutta Percha Company. The cable was laid by CS Malacca, built that same year and chartered by Newall from Glass, Elliot and Company. System length was 550 nm, and the laying was completed on 24 November 1859.

The handwritten title in the cable sample box notes that the cable ran from Batativia to Singapore via Banca.

All cable images courtesy of Fons Vanden Bergen. View Fons' collection at the Telegraph Lore website

Progressive samples, from the core on the left to the finished cable on the right

Research Material Needed

The Atlantic Cable website is non-commercial, and its mission is to make available on line as much information as possible.

You can help - if you have cable material, old or new, please contact me. Cable samples, instruments, documents, brochures, souvenir books, photographs, family stories, all are valuable to researchers and historians.

If you have any cable-related items that you could photograph, copy, scan, loan, or sell, please email me: billb@ftldesign.com