This is Coast. A very unusual Coast.
We're leaving our mainland far, far behind,
off to explore surprising opportunities offshore.
Miranda discovers how a deserted isle promises remarkably long life...
..to puffins.
Nearly 30 years old.
Getting that way.
That's really awesome.
Nick Hewitt boards an extraordinary sea tower.
Now a life-saver but it was built to kill.
Wow, looks like Frankenstein's lab.
And Tessa encounters a top secret weapon...
..with an offshore mystery.
How did the government send orders to a submarine deep underwater?
How do we speak to subs?
My quest takes me offshore across the Atlantic to a new world.
I'm in Canada.
What opportunities did this outpost of empire offer to those
fleeing our isles?
It's almost as if you're more Scottish than the Scots here.
This is Coast - Offshore.
My offshore odyssey to Canada begins on our own shores...
..in Scotland.
The embarkation point for many Scottish emigrants to the
New World was Cromarty.
Offshore opportunities are nothing new here.
Recently, it's been oil rigs in transit to the sea
but in centuries past, people queued for a one-way ticket offshore.
It's the 24th of April 1833,
and there's an air of unrest in Cromarty.
A newspaper advertisement reads, "The subscribers will,
"in a few days, commence fitting out two first class ships,
"to sail from Cromarty betwixt the 25th of May and the 5th of June."
A new life in Canada beckoned.
A mass exodus was under way around the Scottish coast.
In the 18th and 19th centuries tens of thousands departed
the highlands and islands.
They sought new opportunities in North America.
Over 50 ships left for Canada from Cromarty alone.
So, why were the Scots fleeing?
Around 250 years ago, the "highland clearances" began.
Crofters were forced off the land -
people replaced with more profitable sheep.
Some had little choice, others saw Canada as a new start.
In the new world, land was plentiful and settlers were welcome.
But the emigrants left with mixed emotions.
Here's an eyewitness account of one of the departures.
"The Cleopatra as she swept past the town of Cromarty was greeted
"with three cheers by crowds of the inhabitants
"and the emigrants returned the salute...
"..but mingled with the dash of the waves
"and the murmurs of the breeze, their faint huzzas seemed rather
"sounds of wailing and lamentation than of a congratulatory farewell."
Almost two centuries on,
I want to know what became of those who made the voyage.
The only way to find out is to follow them.
I'm heading offshore.
I'm leaving our isles, bound for Canada.
I want to discover what new opportunities awaited overseas.
My journey begins in Nova Scotia, "New Scotland."
Many Scots facing the challenge of a new continent landed at Pictou.
On arrival, ships moored offshore.
Rowing boats ferried the settlers to join fellow Scots who'd
spread the word.
After some six weeks at sea, the newcomers to the New World
had to find their own place to call home.
The prime locations were all coastal
and once those places had been used up, people were
forced inland to the inaccessible forests, places like this. Look,
a tiny clearing, a crude log cabin. It was very tough and in winter,
they had to put up with temperatures down to minus 20 degrees centigrade.
The majority of Scots headed east to Cape Breton.
I'm following them.
It's a road trip which feels strangely familiar.
There's so much of this that reminds me of Scotland. Right now,
we're driving along what could be a sea loch...
..but we're in Canada.
The further I travel, the closer to Scotland I seem.
And this is just like the bridge at the bottom of Glen Coe.
Cape Breton is awash with Scottish namesakes.
It even has its own highlands.
But what's in a name?
I want to know if the settlers were able to retain their Scottish
identity so far from home.
But an inland sea stands in my way. Time to take to the water.
I've got a date with the descendant of one Scottish emigrant who
arrived two centuries ago.
Just over the water is the spot where he settled.
So what did New Scotland have in store for him?
To find out, I need to paddle my way offshore.
Many of those who settled in Canada after their epic Atlantic
voyage were born to life offshore on the Western Isles of Scotland.
Some left island homes with a heavy heart.
Others opted for adventure when opportunity came knocking.
They'd experienced the harsh life off Scotland's shore.
Even the rock is eventually eaten away by the sea.
But there are opportunities for wildlife out here.
Being a strong swimmer helps, and so does a pair of wings.
There's a remarkable sea bird colony on the Shiant Islands.
People have given up the struggle to survive on these volcanic outcrops.
But could they hold the secret to a surprisingly long life for puffins?
Miranda is off to explore.
The rocky Shiants lie about five miles out to sea. Deserted by the
locals 100 years ago, they're now home to over 20,000 sea birds.
But I have just one special bird in my sights.
A bird that hit the headlines.
This is EB73152 but he's more than just a number, this is
the OAP of the bird world, famed as being Britain's oldest puffin.
Scientists recorded his age as 34 -
that's well over 100 in human years.
So why has this puffin pensioner chosen such a harsh
and unforgiving island as home
and how has he managed to survive so long?
I'm trying to meet this offshore hero
to see how sea birds manage to grow so old out here.
And it's just puffins everywhere.
Finding one particular puffin in this lot is a tall task.
I'm relying on some expert bird spotters.
The welcome party awaits on the beach.
Hope they've put a brew on for us.
For just two weeks a year, researchers come to the Shiants.
I'm joining the team who've been ringing puffins here
since the 1970s.
Hopefully my quest to meet the catchily named EB73152 will help
me understand why puffins live so long in remote outposts like this.
If anyone can find him, it's Ian Buxton.
He's been coming to the Shiants for nearly 40 years.
Ian and the puffins have grown old together.
When he netted EB73152, he'd discovered Britain's oldest puffin.
Now, the search continues.
So you're catching them in the mist nets here, how does this work?
And the bird flies into some slack net.
This pocket, and sort of falls down.
Yes, that's right.
So it doesn't harm the bird, it just holds it there safely
and we come along and extract it.
OK. What have you learned about the birds that return here every year?
Well firstly, that they're very long lived. 35 years of thereabouts.
The European record I believe is about 41. That's not a British
one quite yet. Hopefully it will be fairly soon but you never know.
And they're burrow-faithful aren't they?
So you can recover the same bird year after year from the same...
Well, basically a very small area, so it does sounds as though
they are certainly burrow-faithful, and... We have another one in there.
Fairly keen today.
Hopefully these burrow-faithful birds return to the same nest site.
That gives us a chance to nab EB73152.
We'd never spot him by sight.
One puffin looks pretty much like another.
The only way we can tell is simply through the ring,
cos the birds look exactly the same once they get to adulthood.
And I'd say that this one is going to be over 15 years.
That was ringed in 1990
so that's going to be 26/27 years old at least.
No sign of EB73152, but surprisingly there are lots of old puffins.
Wow, look at that.
1st July 1985.
That's nearly 30 years old. That's really awesome.
I'm looking for one long-lived bird,
but this island is full of puffin pensioners.
It's remarkable to find they can grow so old offshore.
And it's not just puffins. Oystercatchers, 40 years old,
razorbills, 41,
and Britain's oldest Manx shearwater, an astonishing 50 years old.
In contrast, garden birds have an average life expectancy less
than 2 years.
To keep the population going, they have many chicks quickly.
But puffins invest in one chick at a time.
Oh, look at that. Cuteness in the extreme!
Do you want to swap?
Well, if you're happy to.
Yes, there you go, have a cuddle.
It's not going to take my arm off is it?
Oh, look at that that is just the best thing, how sweet.
A single bundle of fluff, a year's worth of effort for proud parents.
Once fledged, the young birds take time to learn
survival in their harsh offshore home.
They don't breed until they're at least four years old.
It's this breeding strategy which provides the best answer as to
why puffins live so long.
Long-lived puffins get a chance to rear many chicks.
Offshore, they've found the opportunity to live with few predators
poaching their precious young.
But then something happened.
A threat to the puffin nest suddenly appeared on tier rocky outpost.
Somewhere out there,
hidden from view is Britain's only colony of black rats.
Rats with a reputation for eating puffin eggs.
The black rats probably landed on the island after a shipwreck
over 100 years ago.
Now, the rats can feed on puffin eggs and attack their chicks.
Being a wildlife enthusiast, I love all animals
but I find it very hard to feel affectionate towards rats.
Especially if you're sleeping near them.
Our cameras reveal my worst fears.
Black rats foraging for food around our camp.
Offshore, the fate of these castaways has become entwined with the puffins.
In the cold light of day, I'm meeting Charlie Elder,
who's studied the black rats of the Shiants.
Black rats now only exist in some dockland areas and on this
island. This is the last stable population of black rats in Britain.
In a way, you've got this rare species,
so should you be conserving it, but then you've got the sea bird
colonies that you want to conserve as well,
so it's a bit of a dilemma for conservationists.
If you get rats on an island, they can devastate sea bird
populations and cause extinctions.
It seems here the fine balance has been struck
between the sea bird populations and the rats.
But we'll never know how much bigger the sea bird populations could be
if the rats weren't here.
Puffin utopia or the black rat's last stand, the opportunities
offered offshore, held in the balance here on the Shiants.
EB73152 hasn't turned up. Maybe he's finally come to the
end of his innings out in the Atlantic, or maybe,
like the puffin I'm ringing, he'll be back in years to come.
So you could come back in 30 years and say hi.
Wouldn't that be amazing if I did?
All right, little puffin. I might see you again one day, off you go.
Puffins spend much of their life offshore,
returning to the same island time and again.
But I'm pursuing Scottish men
and women who left these shores never to return.
The Isle of Barra is the powerbase of the Clan MacNeil.
Around two centuries ago, many of the MacNeils deserted Barra.
Clansman Donald McNeil was one of them and I'm on his trail.
Donald sought fresh opportunities
and more land offshore in Nova Scotia - New Scotland.
I'm following Donald MacNeil's route to a new life.
What became of his overseas gamble?
Apparently, it was springtime, 1802, a good time of year, the whole
summer ahead of them to get a toehold in this wilderness.
There are no pictures of Donald, just the graves of his descendants.
But luckily for us, the final stages of his epic transatlantic
journey have been logged in his family archive.
"Donald and his son Rory came in a small rowboat.
"After rowing some distance down the lake,
"they came to the north side of the narrows."
And this is it straight ahead here. I can see a beach
and I'm just trying to put myself in their rowing boat, imagine what they
felt. They'd made this extraordinary journey across the Atlantic, they'd
taken a heavy rowing boat over land, across the sea, and they'd
finally reached this spot, the place that was going to provide for them,
perhaps for all time, and they were about to set foot on that land.
And I've got to say, today it feels absolutely enchanting.
So far from all the places and people they'd known,
Donald and his son pressed on.
I've got my heart in my mouth, I'm quite emotional.
"They landed, staked out lands, and decided to settle down.
"Those were the first MacNeils who settled in Cape Breton."
For the MacNeils!
I feel a bond with this Scotsman who invested all in a one-way ticket,
braving the unknown to begin again.
I'm two centuries too late to see him,
but I can meet his direct descendant, Vince MacNeil.
Very good to meet you. Nice to meet you.
So, this is the beach? This is the very place,
the very place where my ancestors arrived in 1800.
It must mean something very special to you.
It's very special to me. It's part of my identity, part of who I am.
And what do you think Donald and Rory were like as people?
Well, they were adventurous, that's for sure, to come to a place
where they had never been before which was unsettled, the New World.
It would have been dangerous for them, so they had to be brave
to go from being simple crofters to owning hundreds of acres of land.
It would have been just amazing for them.
200 years on, Vince ensures Scottish ties aren't extinguished.
He's keeper of the family flame.
So, through my father, I would be Vincent son of Edward,
son of Raymond, son of Hector, son of Hector, son of James,
son of Malcolm, son of John, son of Rory the piper.
And through my mother, I would be Vincent, son of Patsy MacNeil,
daughter of Hector Joseph, son of Franz Hector, Son of Hector Rory,
son of Rory Mor, son of Donald, son of Rory.
All MacNeils.
You really DO know your family story, don't you? I do.
And I actually have my family tree here,
so I can show you my connection with them. Fantastic.
I might need some help with this.
Oh my, it's huge! Is this beach big enough?
I'm not sure.
Wow, that is amazing! So, going down the tree,
where do we get to Donald who landed on this beach?
OK, there is Donald and there is Rory Mor, his son.
You've shown an unusual passion for tracing your roots.
It's just part of who I am, and it's also part of my culture.
Genetic links offshore across the ocean.
What else did those pioneers carry with them
from the old country to the New World?
Up in the village, a highland gathering awaits.
Nick, these are some of my cousins here that we've assembled,
and we're going to have a milling frolic. A what?
The milling frolic is an old community ritual. Beating
newly woven cloth compressed the fibres, making it warmer to wear.
It looks extraordinary to me coming from Britain.
Well, the traditions here survived.
And do you take part in this yourself?
Yes, yes. Would you like to join us?
Well, yeah I'd love to yeah. Come on over.
Hello, that was wonderful.
I've never heard of a milling frolic. It's completely extraordinary.
It's almost as if you're more Scottish than the Scots here.
It's about maintaining your heritage and your culture
and this is a good way to do it.
People get together, have fun, and sing songs.
So, if your ancestors walked over the hill now, they'd immediately
recognise the song, the sound, and they'd know what you're doing?
Exactly yep, they'd be quite familiar with it.
So, here's a bit of a tricky question,
Are you more Canadian or more Scottish?
Oh, we're more Cape Bretoners.
I'm sorry, I can't lie.
I'm suddenly feeling very English and a bit underdressed.
THEY SING SCOTTISH SONG
Traditionally, before being beaten, the cloth was soaked in stale
urine to get rid of any unwanted oils.
Luckily for me the Nova Scotians don't observe the ritual that closely.
The milling frolic's a new one on me.
But for these descendants of Scottish emigrants, it's a
bridge across the great divide.
An incredibly powerful sense of connection between the MacNeils
here in Nova Scotia
and their roots in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. It's as if
200 year of history and 2,000 miles of Atlantic Ocean just didn't exist.
It's as if Nova Scotia is moored just offshore mainland Scotland.
We've left our mainland behind...
..to explore outposts of opportunity.
An ocean away in Canada and closer to home.
Beyond our own shore, we've built a network of offshore enterprise.
Strange structures providing new possibilities.
Beacons to light the way.
Farms in the sea to harvest fish.
Metal giants to deliver energy.
A little-seen world of wonder,
littered with extraordinary outposts.
But head off our south coast, and the waters of the Solent
surround a structure shrouded in mystery.
An offshore riddle best investigated from Portsmouth.
Naval historian Nick Hewitt is going back to the First World War.
Ever since I was a boy, I've been fascinated by subs.
I've always wanted to do that. I'm standing on a U-Boat.
The threat U-Boats might sink Britain a century ago was very real.
Offshore at Portsmouth is a towering reminder of Britain's
anti-submarine war.
And there she is.
You can just make out a sort of shadowy spec on the horizon.
She's known as the Nab Tower and she was
built in 1918 as a defence against attack by German U-Boats.
The Nab Tower was kept top secret during its construction
but she wasn't alone.
There were two towers.
Take a look at this newspaper account from the time.
It was written when the towers were nearing completion at Shoreham
on the south coast and it says that "no-one except for those responsible
"for their construction knows for what use they're intended."
It goes on to describe them as "the mysterious twins"
The press went to town on the towers,
but no-one knew the desperate wartime plan.
The towers were being built to intercept
German U-Boats in the English Channel.
Nets, mines, and patrol boats were part of the scheme
but the crowning glory was something more concrete.
If you can put forts permanently in the straits,
then you've got powerful gunfire support for these little warships.
But why did only one of the towers make it offshore, and not
as planned in the Dover Straits, but here close to Portsmouth?
Nearly a century on, mystery still surrounds the Nab Tower.
Now there's a chance to explore
while vital repairs are taking place.
This is just amazing. I've looked at this for years
and years from shore side but I've never been this close
and I've certainly never stepped aboard.
Look at the rust on that.
I've got to get off this boat now.
That will do! Wow, excellent.
Up close, the Nab Tower is enormous.
Civil Engineer Ron Blakely has the stats.
It weighs, we understand, up to about 20,000 tonnes,
and 10,000 tonnes of steel above.
So how on earth was this massive structure going to be
installed offshore?
To see how clever the secret plan was, take one cardboard box
and smother it in quick-drying concrete.
And...it floats!
It floats. Perfectly.
A huge hollow base meant the Nab Tower was built to float.
The idea was to tow the floating structure offshore.
Then what?
Right, here we go then.
This power drill offers a clue.
The valves are open, the air is coming out, down she goes.
Settles to the bottom of the sea.
Fantastic.
Within the Nab's base was a honeycomb of floodable tubes.
It was a brilliant plan, but there was a big problem.
The construction proved so complex that by the time the towers
were ready, the First World War was over.
This should have been the nerve centre to intercept U-Boats
patrolling the Channel a century ago.
Wow, looks like Frankenstein's lab.
But she never saw action.
With the war finished,
whilst still in dock, one twin was quietly scrapped.
But for the other tower, the authority spied an offshore opportunity.
In 1920, she was finally towed out to sea, not near Dover to fight
subs, but 100 miles further along the coast near Portsmouth
for an unexpected career as a lighthouse,
a beacon in one of the world's busiest shipping lanes.
Now, a much-needed make-over will keep the light
burning for another 50 years at least.
It's really great to see this fantastic piece of history
living on usefully into the 21st century.
We're exploring opportunities offshore.
I've journeyed over the ocean to Canada.
I'm following in the tracks of those who left our shores
forever in search of a new life.
In Nova Scotia, I discovered connections reaching
back across the seas to Scotland.
Now, I'm heading east to where an expedition from England first
set foot over a century earlier.
When Nova Scotia became a home from home for the Scots,
it was the English who first laid claim to Newfoundland.
I've journeyed to the first site settled by English emigrants -
Cupids Cove.
England's interest in Canada was first aroused by explorer
John Cabot who landed in 1497.
Now, as Cabot was working for Henry VII, it was the English who
claimed all of this and named it, rather prosaically, New-found-land.
But it took over 100 years for emigrants to take
advantage of this new outpost.
In 1610, adventurers led by John Guy arrived here in Cupids Cove
to establish England's first Canadian colony.
I've got a clue to help me
find where those first English pioneers set up home.
It's a copy of a letter written in 1611 by one of the settlers and
it describes in very exact detail how to find the settlement site.
I have to walk for 240 paces from the side of this lake towards the coast.
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6...
I've done a lot of walking...
..108,109,110...
..but this is a first.
Each step brings me closer to the origins of an English colony.
240 and there it is, an English flag.
The cross marks the spot.
Wow, take a look at this.
An archaeological investigation is being led by Bill Gilbert.
Very good to meet you.
Nice to meet you, welcome to Cupids. Why, thank you.
The site of the first English settlement in Canada, established in 1610.
The dig reveals the first stones laid by English settlers.
Four centuries on, it's as though building has only just started.
This is the outside wall? This is the outside wall.
These are the foundations of modern Canada in a way.
Really, it's the beginnings of English Canada.
This precious time capsule contains everyday treasures
from home that the settlers carried with them far offshore.
This is actually the earliest English coin ever found in Canada.
Wow. It was minted at the Tower of London. It's a silver fourpence.
That's amazing! A groat, yeah.
Whoever dropped that must have been gutted. How much would...
Well I would think it would probably have been half a day's pay for sure.
It's a big chunk of change, you wouldn't want to lose it.
This is an apothecary jar. This would have held perhaps ointment
or some sort of medicine, and it was probably made in Southwark.
Come all the way from the Thames. From the Thames.
They were importing their culture, their way of life.
This is bringing Englishness to the continent of North America.
Exactly. Yeah,
they were trying to re-establish their culture here in the New World.
These long lost pieces make a personal connection to
a motherland an ocean away.
Cherished possessions of those who dared to explore new opportunities.
Following the success of the first settlement at Cupids Cove,
more English communities soon sprang up.
There was a clear pattern to the locations they chose to settle.
Look at a map and nearly every town in Newfoundland is coastal.
Settlers came here to make the most of the bounties offshore.
Newfoundland's seas were teeming with fish.
When John Cabot discovered Newfoundland, eyewitnesses
spoke of the seas here being,
The king of them all was cod.
Over the centuries, a huge industry grew,
attracting trawlers from around the world.
The early pioneers came to start new lives.
Then generations of British fishermen took the opportunity
to plunder the riches off Newfoundland's shores.
Those days of plenty are long gone.
Cod fishing was banned when stocks collapsed.
British boats have disappeared.
But what links do remain with the motherland?
It seems they're still flying the flag.
This little harbour town claims to have the largest
Union Jack in the world.
Today, they're giving it an airing.
This is a big flag.
To be exact, this monster is 23 foot by 36 foot.
Why do these Canadians fly the Union flag?
You're a long way from England, a long way from Britain.
Yes, but we still feel very connected. I guess many
of our people came from Devon, and we think we're very British here.
I have tights with Union Jacks on them, I have boxer shorts
with Union Jacks on them, I have pillows, I have everything.
We're very proud of this Union Jack.
It's the birthplace of English Canada.
Without any further ado, we're going to raise our flag,
and as we do, we're going to sing "God Save the Queen."
# God save our gracious Queen
# Long live our noble Queen
# God save the Queen. #
When the province of Newfoundland voted to join Canada in 1949,
political ties were severed but emotional bonds are stronger.
No longer an outpost of Empire,
they still salute those who braved the ocean for unknown opportunities.
Back home, life offshore provides a different sort of escape.
Free from the confines of our island's edge, spirits soar.
Coastal folk spend happy hours gazing out to sea.
But some go further. They chose to spend eternity offshore.
My name is John Lister.
I spend the vast majority of my life by the sea, by the coast
but I'm here today for a very special reason.
We're leaving here from Keyhaven and we shall go about 3 miles south of
the Needles, which are the western extreme of the Isle of Wight,
to a designated area specifically for burial at sea.
Everyone in the UK has a right to be buried at sea,
should they choose that way.
If we did 20 in a year, we'd be surprised
so it's a very, very tiny percentage of people who actually opt for this.
As the engine slows on the boat, we'll often play Elgar's Nimrod.
And then we will often read Tennyson's Crossing The Bar,
and that poem is very, very pertinent.
"Sunset and evening star And one clear call for me!
"And may there be no moaning of the bar,
"When I put out to sea."
We have come here today as an expression of our regard
for the life of a beloved human being...
In quite a few occasions, we've had people that have
opted for a burial at sea because they've got
a son in Australia, a daughter in America and they feel that as they
become part of the sea, so they sort of unite family together as it were.
The coffins are made of 18mm marine ply that bears no
resemblance to the coffin you see pallbearers bringing into a church.
They will survive in the water for about 4-5 years.
They will just return to pulp and the concrete that's in them
will return to sand, by which time the deceased is there no longer.
"We have met to pay tribute and say farewell.
"We therefore commit his body to the deep in maritime tradition.
"May he rest in peace."
"For tho' from out our borne of Time and Place
"The flood may bear me far,
"I hope to see my Pilot face to face When I have crost the bar."
Leaving the mainland behind, surprising stories
await in the surrounding seas.
We're exploring life offshore.
For some, life at sea is part of the job.
Our Navy has long roamed the oceans,
only returning to land to ready for their next adventure.
In our harbours, great ships are on show for all to see.
But far from home,
the Navy has a fleet of boats that they'd rather keep hidden.
Weapons of war, roving far, far offshore.
Today, a battle-hardened veteran of this secret fleet
rests at Devonport.
Tessa's about to discover how we keep in contact with our submarines.
Lying in Devonport is a beached steel whale.
But this whale was a killer. An attack submarine.
Courageous here is the sister vessel of the only British submarine
that's sunk a warship since the Second World War
and here is that deadly sub, HMS Conqueror.
Like Courageous, HMS Conqueror is now retired
but she's famous, or some would say infamous, for sinking the Belgrano.
In 1982, Britain prepared to fight way off our shores.
Britain has sent more ships to join the Falklands Task Force, now
steaming south.
Argentina had invaded the Falkland Islands.
Britain readied to re-take them by force.
Then came a deadly strike.
The Argentinian cruiser, General Belgrano,
was hit by torpedoes fired from a British submarine.
On May the 2nd 1982, the sub HMS Conqueror fired three torpedoes.
She hit the General Belgrano,
a perceived threat to the British fleet. 323 men died.
The lethal blow came from Conqueror
but permission to fire came from home.
How did the British government in London send orders to
a submarine deep underwater 8,000 miles away in the south Atlantic?
How do we speak to subs?
Attack submarines are on the front line.
They patrol at the sharp end in stealth, miles offshore.
Our Government needed to contact the subs,
but hundreds of feet underwater, that wasn't so easy.
When submerged, it was tricky to tune into signals
as ex-radio operator Mike Pitt knows.
So, Mike, this was the radio control room?
It was the radio office.
And what was your main job in here? What were you doing?
To receive all the signals coming from the UK.
Right, but you'd have to go up to a certain depth to receive
the signal to then pick it up here?
There were a number of different aerials carried on board,
for example we have a floating wire aerial which trailed
out the back of the submarine.
If we were using that, the submarine could stay at a lower depth
because the aerial was then lying just underneath the surface.
We had another aerial which was fitted into the back of the fin,
so then the submarine had to come a lot shallower to be able to receive the signals.
Our submarines had multiple aerials to try and receive radio messages.
But still, in the Falklands War, communication proved a major problem
as recently released documents reveal.
Kept top secret for years, we now have the de-classified
Captain's narrative from HMS Conqueror.
On the 5th of April 1982, Conqueror left Faslane for the Falklands.
But as she approached the South Atlantic,
deep underwater, there were radio failures.
"9th of April 1982. Traffic received, garbled.
"13th of April 1982. All corrupt, attempting to patch the signals."
Vital commands were struggling to reach the most deadly
weapon in the Task Force.
How come receiving radio signals underwater was so hard?
I'm at sea with scientist Chris Stevens.
Why is it so challenging for radio waves to try and penetrate water?
When radio waves hit water, particularly sea water, it's
just like light hitting metal. A lot of the waves reflect,
and what little actually enters the water is very rapidly absorbed.
It creates electrical currents in the water that absorb the energy.
To see how radio signals of different frequencies perform
underwater, we'll try different radio stations.
So Chris, what are we actually going to do?
OK, so we have a radio here.
HE PLAYS RADIO
Here we go. Receiving radio waves.
So Chris, that station you've just tuned into is an FM station,
or broadcast on FM which means it's high frequency.
That's right, high frequency means many, many,
many radio peaks per second, whereas low frequencies are very, very
long waves with only a few peaks coming past.
Let's see if it works.
So, put the radio into our plastic submarine,
attach a depth gauge, submerge it in seawater and listen.
RADIO GURGLES
Oh! We can't hear a thing.
Is that what we're left with, some gurgling? That's all you're left with.
Just 10cm beneath the sea, the high frequency FM radio signal is lost.
It's no good for submarines.
Not at all, useless.
What happens when we repeat, but with a lower frequency station?
OK, so this is long wave.
This is long wave yeah, this is the lowest frequency we've got.
We're going to toss Radio 4 into the estuary.
Let's do it.
How far down is the basket?
It's about 2m.
OK, can I still hear the radio?
Yes, definitely still get human voices.
The low frequency signal penetrates much deeper...
..down about 2m before it fades out.
So long wave 20 times more effective underwater than the higher
frequency FM, but still, Chris, 2m, I mean, not great
if you're a giant submarine having to come up that high.
No, this would still be no good.
To get a 150m underwater, the Navy had to go to
a frequency 3,000 times lower than this one.
Very low frequency or VLF radio signals were the key to
communicating with subs.
But the lower the frequency,
the bigger the masts needed to transmit the message.
At a massive installation in Rugby, a giant array of antennae
sent commands to our submarines, using very low frequency, VLF, radio
as former Station Manager, Malcolm Hancock remembers.
This is a plan of the site, the 900 acre site with
all of the large 12 masts. You see them dotted all around here.
During the Falklands War, the signals were top secret.
Even Malcolm's team couldn't decipher them.
Messages came up by landline from Northwood or Whitehall.
We could transmit in Morse code or latterly in the Cold War,
more teleprinter messages,
a single teleprinter message would be going out.
8,000 miles from home, HMS Conqueror entered the Falklands battle zone.
The stakes couldn't' be higher.
But she'd been struggling to receive VLF radio signals.
"The VLF broadcast is not helping me."
The problem was the VLF radio was optimised for the Cold War,
a Soviet-NATO stand-off in the North Atlantic.
But the Falklands War was in the South Atlantic.
In the southern Ocean VLF messages were at their limits.
There was an alternative
but it meant submarines sacrificing their greatest advantage...
..stealth,
as former Commander Chris Munns knows.
The submarines were also capable of receiving a satellite signal.
In order to receive that satellite signal,
they had to expose an aerial above the water
which, of course, implied much more risk for the submarine
because they were detectable if they had an aerial above the water.
The very thing VLF was designed to avoid,
HMS Conqueror now had to do - expose herself.
Even worse, a damaged mast forced her to surface,
to repair the satellite aerial.
The Argentinians might detect Conqueror.
But radioed intelligence also helped Conqueror identify a target.
"I have remained in the trail for the last 11 hours.
"In contact with the enemy at last!"
She had found the cruiser, General Belgrano.
Then, on the afternoon of 2nd May 1982,
the Conqueror was sent orders that made history.
We know from Margaret Thatcher's account that the cabinet
approved the Conqueror to attack the Belgrano at 13.30, half past one...
Right.
..and the signal was transmitted to Conqueror shortly after that.
The signal was received slightly garbled
because the reception wasn't perfect
and the captain wanted to make sure he had a perfect clean copy
of this very important signal before he could act against the Belgrano.
So, once had the authority to attack the Belgrano, he moved
into a firing position, and he fired just before 7 o'clock, at 18.56.
Yeah look at that, order of firing.
The Conqueror fired three torpedoes.
Two struck the Belgrano, she caught fire and sank.
The attack on the Belgrano remains controversial
but it changed the course of the conflict.
Argentine ships retreated to their own waters.
HMS Conqueror returned victorious.
Now, a new generation of submarines patrol.
They carry a vastly more powerful threat, Britain's nuclear weapons.
In the dire scenario that we suffer a devastating attack,
wiping out central authority, the loneliest decision,
whether to retaliate, would lie with a Commander offshore.
We've struggled for centuries to keep in touch with far-flung outposts.
200 years ago, as the Empire grew, so did our need to send messages.
Communications carried by sail across the Atlantic took 2 weeks.
But amazingly, we eventually became hard-wired to North America,
here, at Heart's Content.
This remote harbour was the westernmost landing point
of one of the greatest offshore
triumphs of the 19th century, the Transatlantic cable.
In 1866, a gigantic steam ship,
Brunel's Great Eastern, left Ireland bound for Heart's Content in Canada.
Behind her unravelled 2,000 miles of telegraph cable.
I'm told the cable that transformed global communication is still to be found.
And here it is, rising from the sea and crossing a beach.
It's amazing, actually, just to see it lying here
rusting on the pebbles.
This cable once carried messages 2,000 miles across the Atlantic all
the way from Heart's Content here to Valentia in Ireland.
When the Great Eastern moored in the bay at Heart's Content
and the cable was brought ashore, continent was wired to continent.
Messages now sped around the world in minutes.
It was an audacious feat of engineering
that's captured our imagination on Coast.
We've visited the cable station on the Irish Coast...
..and even unearthed the remains of the Great Eastern near Liverpool.
But now I want to explore the other side of the story.
I want to know how this cable transformed life
here in Newfoundland.
Who better to ask than Roland Peddle who manned the
cable station in the 1950s.
This is where the cable was coming in, right here. Oh, really. Yes.
And there they all are, look, coming out of the floor.
I find it amazing that the messages between two entire continents
were passing through these bits of wire here.
The old cable station was cutting edge mid-20th century technology.
But what I really want to know is what Roland was listening in on.
Everything that happened on your side of the Atlantic,
private messages, all the news, came out here.
I was here from 1953 to '60 and some of the things that
happened in that time, of course... Grace Kelly married Rainier.
Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe,
they sent these hot little messages back and forth all the time.
Did you read them? Oh, did I ever. Er.
C'mon tell us one or two. Do you remember any of them?
No. But there were different things like that. I bet you do really.
I'm not going to give you any juicy stuff,
poor old Marilyn would turn over in her grave.
Just a little nugget, go on.
There was everything, how much they loved each other
and missed each other and all this and where they were and how
they were sort of, you know, hiding away from, well, the paparazzi.
Didn't call them paparazzi then, you know, all that kind of stuff.
But one thing that I can remember especially was that it was
a time Fidel Castro took over from Batista,
and of course it was history and I decided that
I would keep the history, and even though I probably was not
allowed to do it, I would take the tape, and I would wind up the tape
and get all the tape wound up, and I had it. Oh, I had all kinds of stuff.
And my dear mum ended up getting Alzheimer's, and she quietly
discarded the whole works. Oh, no! Yeah. The whole thing I had, yeah.
Soon afterwards, the cable station at Heart's Content
and the cable itself were discarded too, overtaken by new technologies.
But on my journey, I've found much older connections.
Connections between people endure.
The arrival of those first emigrants from our shores planted
memories of home still nurtured here.
Those memories, those connections are a bond across the oceans.
For many islanders who head offshore,
the greater the distance, the stronger the bond.