How news of Abraham Lincoln's assassination took 12 DAYS to reach Cork

We live in an age of instant communication, but when U.S President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in 1865, it took 12 days before anyone in Europe even knew about it.

It would have taken even longer, but for a quick-thinking correspondent for the Reuters news agency, James McLean

He heard the breaking news of the tragedy in Washington over the telegraph wire in his New York office, scribbled a despatch, and rushed to the docks to send it.

Damn! The mail ship Teutonia had just left for England — so McLean chartered a tugboat and chased it until he got close enough to throw his despatch, inside a canister, on board. His quick-thinking earned him the nickname ‘Tugboat’ ever after!

Twelve days later, the Teutonia had a rendezvous with the steamer Marseilles off the Cork coast, dropping off its canisters of U.S mail, including the precious cargo from McLean.

Thus, 160 years ago, on the morning of Wednesday, April 26, 1865, three men in a rowing boat, employed by Reuters, set out from Brow Head, near Crookhaven, to intercept the mail from the Marseilles. Upon opening the canisters, they became the first people in Europe to learn that Lincoln was dead.

From there, the news was wired to Cork, then London. The drama was portrayed in a 1940 film, A Dispatch From Reuter’s, starring Edward G. Robinson as Julius Reuter, head of the news agency.

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In 1865, international communication and news gathering was on the cusp of an exciting new age, and Cork was playing a central role.

Just a year later, in 1866, the first transatlantic cable would link the U.S to Valentia Island in Kerry, but till then, ships had to bring the latest news over by hand.

Thus, reports of the U.S Civil War of 1861-65 were despatched to Queenstown (now Cobh), via sailing and later steam ships, with a delay of more than a week.

Legendary editor of the Cork Examiner, Thomas Crosbie, aided by two sturdy oarsmen from Aghada, would row out to the vessels and pick up news bundles in canisters. He would take this ashore, ensuring his paper was first with the news, and then telegraph it to London.

News from Gettysburg of the Unionists’ Civil War victory over the Confederates first landed in Cork in this way.

However, Crosbie had a rival — Julius Reuter, founder in 1851 of the agency that bears his name.

The German sought to beat him to the news, and decided Crookhaven was the place to do it.

There had been a look-out tower on Brow Head since Napoleonic times, and Lloyds shipping agency had had a representative there since the 18th century, recording passing vessels, and sending the information back to head office in London. Now Reuter was going to take things a step further.

He employed six Cork farmers to lay a telegraph wire from the GPO in Cork to Brow Head, across all kinds of difficult terrain. He then arranged for mail ships to drop their canisters of mail in the water — with a flag and a blue light to enable it to be seen — and paid men to row out and collect it.

This news, gathered by Reuter’s various correspondents all across America, would then be relayed to Cork and all over Europe. The original Reuters cable hut is still there, on the western side of Crookhaven.

The telegraph would eventually be replaced as a communications medium by long distance radio transmission, invented by Italian Guglielmo Marconi, who based his early efforts in Crookhaven before he moved up the country.

An edited extract from Stories From The Sea, by Jo Kerrigan, published by O’Brien Press.