Thunderstruck - Erik Larson [46]
The next day brought more of the same: “The weather was still bad and I told them at the Foreland that I was feeling ill, but I managed to send the 3 c.m. spark.” Despite the increasingly awful conditions, Kemp recorded “splendid results,” though it is hard to imagine how he achieved anything. “The waves were still breaking over the ship and I could not get on deck for fresh air. I was very cold, wet and miserable and had very little sleep.”
By December 30 even stalwart Kemp began to crack. Conditions were so dangerous he could not venture topside for air. He used the ship’s wireless to send a message of his own. “I told Mr. Marconi that I was not well enough to remain on board any longer and he must send for me when the wind dropped…. I told him that we wanted fresh meat, vegetables, bread and bacon but this was taken, it appeared, as a joke. The fact that I had come on board on Dec. 19, with provisions for one week had evidently been forgotten, also that I had been on board for 12 days living, the latter part, on quarter rations, consequently I had to beg, borrow and steal from the Lightshipmen.”
New Year’s Day 1899, his fourteenth day aboard, was cold and wet, with high seas, high winds, heavy rain. The next day he wrote, “I was so stiff and weak that I could scarcely move.”
But at last, on January 4, the weather eased and became “quite calm.” Supplies arrived for Kemp, “some mutton, a fowl, 2 bottles of Claret, 2 loaves, potatoes, a cabbage, sprouts and fruit.” He added, with an underline for emphasis, “Had some good fresh food after 17 days.”
Four months later the lightship’s wireless provided a vivid demonstration of what Marconi long had hoped his technology would accomplish. In April, after heavy fog settled over the Goodwin Sands, a steamship named R. F. Mathews, 270 feet long and displacing nearly two thousand tons and carrying coal, yes, from Newcastle, rammed the lightship. The crew used Marconi’s wireless transmitter to notify Trinity House and Lloyd’s of the accident. Damage to both ships was minimal, and no one on either vessel was hurt.
DESPITE THIS AND OTHER SUCCESSES, including the first messages sent by wireless across the English Channel, the year 1899 proved a barren one for Marconi and his company, with no revenue from his invention and no prospect of any. Trinity House had been impressed with the Goodwin experiments but did not come forth with a contract. Nor did Lloyd’s of London, though its representatives had been pleased with the Rathlin Island experiment and likely would have kept the system in operation if William Preece, citing the postal monopoly over telegraphy in Britain, had not stepped in and shut it down and replaced it with one of his own induction systems. Meanwhile the wall of skepticism that confronted Marconi seemed just as high and unbreachable as ever. Suspicion persisted about his motives and heritage and about the nature of the phenomena he had harnessed and its potential dangers. Rumor spread that wireless could be used to blow up warships.
In some people suspicion became outright fear, as evidenced by an incident that occurred at the station Marconi had built in France for his cross-channel experiments. The station was at Wimereux on the French coast, thirty-two miles across the English Channel from the South Foreland station that Marconi had erected for the lightship trials.
Anyone passing near the operator’s room at night saw pulses of blue lightning and heard the loud crack of each spark, an eerie and disconcerting effect, especially on nights dusted with sea mist when the spark-light flared as a pale aurora. Inside, the juxtaposition of Marconi’s apparatus against the decor of the room made things still more odd. The wallpaper and the rug and the tablecloth under the machine were all printed, dyed, or stitched with garish flowers.
One night, during a storm, an engineer named W. W. Bradfield was sitting at the Wimereux transmitter, when suddenly the door to the room crashed open. In the portal stood a man disheveled by the storm and apparently