Down fathoms dived, the cable lies.

Giles Booth

A little post on the inspirations behind series 7 of Listen with Other: Hello World.

The main story was inspired by the very real history of Victorian transatlantic telegraphy and Wildman Whitehouse passing excessive currents through the early cable.

Exhibit of broken and faulty undersea cables in Porthcurno

Those first transatlantic cables didn't land in Cornwall, but many others did in Porthcurno and indeed in Mousehole, where the two cables visible on the beach inspired me to write and record this story.

The pub in the village is called 'The Knockers Arms' - Knockers being creatures of Cornish folklore, said to inhabit mines and play tricks on miners. I may also have been thinking of the 1984 Children's Film Foundation film Haunters of the Deep but that's another story...

a boy and a girl by a disused tin mine

The curator of the museum is, of course, a close relation of Mark Gatiss' museum curator in his wonderful little series Crooked House.

Mark Gatiss as a museum curator in his 3-part 2008 BBC series Crooked House.

The poem 'Down fathoms dived, the cable lies...' is real, from an 1865 humour magazine called, optimistically, Fun. The failure of the transatlantic cable was ripe for satire...

THE SEVERED CABLE ‘Down fathoms dived, the cable lies– From its end’s “dead earth” conveyed, Drawing pearls from mermaids’ eyes: Some day still it must be laid, Though shares suffer now on ’Change; If they didn’t ’twould be strange, Since the sea-nymphs ring its knell. Hark! now I hear them–ding-dong bell! Ding-dong bell!’

If that's sparked your interest, you can hear 'Hello World' as series 7 of LISTEN WITH OTHER on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, other podcast providers and here.

A Victorian cartoon of Puck on a buoy by a severed undersea telegraph cables. The caption is BUOYED WITH HOPE.

Oh, and the title of episode 3 is a reference to the TV play I willed into existence and which suggests Daphne du Maurier was the best writer Doctor Who never had.