Lisa : It’s the 29th November 2018 and this is an interview with Mr Sandle at his home in Newport. Could we start by you telling me your full name?
Edward : I’ve got three Christian names, that Edward Anthony George Sandle, normally called Ted.
Lisa : And what is your date of birth?
Edward : 1938. Well that’s what it says on my Birth Certificate and I’m doubtful about that.
Lisa : And where were you born?
Edward : Kingston-upon-Thames.
Lisa : And what brought you to live and work on the Isle of Wight?
Edward : Well my father moved to the Island after the War in 1947 and naturally I came with him and then living near the sea made me interested in the sea and so I went to sea in the Merchant Navy as a Radio Officer. After some time with them, I then went into the Diplomatic Wireless Service and after a couple of tours abroad, my wife decided she didn’t want to go abroad anymore so I came back to live on … well, eventually I came back to the Island with the Post Office to Niton Radio Station.
Lisa : And about what time would that have been?
Edward : Luckily I’ve made a note because it was in … I joined the Post Office in 1971 and I came over to the Island about a year later. In those days Niton Radio Station was owned and operated by the Post Office and the Post Office was part of the Civil Service at that time, so it was a fairly straight swap from the Diplomatic Service into the Post Office, so I could do that and retain my pension and everything else.
Lisa : So could we talk a bit about the actual Station at Niton? Could you just give me a description of what the building looked like and its location?
Edward : Well when I joined in 1971, it was still down on the Undercliff at Niton and it was what had been a Lloyd’s Signal Station and also I believe at some time had been a Marconi operated radio station, and it had a sprawling building which was the Station itself, and then it had four or five houses grouped round it and I lived in one of those which was a semi-detached one which had a great big overhead concrete ceiling above us which was where the Lloyd’s Signal Station used to be. They used to have a big set of binoculars mounted on this concrete, so it didn’t vibrate and access to this floor was from the back because the land went up … sorry, I’m using my hands … the land went up behind the building so that there was an access to it without coming into the house itself. But we lived in one of the … there were two houses then and we lived in one of them. I wasn’t very happy living in it because of the weight above us and this concrete, I think the building was slowly falling and you could see the cracks in the wall getting bigger, so I moved out and bought a house in Brighstone. But then, being the Isle of Wight, and the distances, we have a different idea of distances on the Isle of Wight and travelling to Niton from Brighstone, everyone said, “You can’t do that after being on night duty, it’s too long a journey.” It took all of 20 minutes (laughs) so I then moved in to Whitwell and bought a house in Whitwell. The Niton Radio Station, as I say, was down on the Undercliff and the Station Officer’s house … there were four Operator’s houses and the rest of the people who operated there lived all over the place, mainly in Niton. The Radio Station then moved in 1975, moved up to near Whitwell, at Stenbury Down, an old RAF Station that had been what they called a ‘Forward Scatter Station’ which had been rather experimental, and it was empty, so the Post Office took it over and we moved up to there, much bigger and more modern site. No accommodation of course, no buildings round there, so it was quite convenient that I lived in Whitwell ‘cos I was the nearest one to it. And then we changed some of our working arrangements. In the old Station, we were all Morse keys and we did have some old teleprinters, very old teleprinters and when we moved up to the new Station, everything got a bit more up to date and we had new teleprinters and we were connected more into the system of things and we actually had a system called Piccolo at one stage and we used to send the Press to the Queen Elizabeth. She was equipped with Piccolo. I know that sounds a funny name. It was called that because it sounded like a piccolo, made a warbling sound, and they received the Press from us using that Piccolo system. Of course, the Queen Elizabeth is no longer with us and neither is Piccolo I think.
6 minutes
Lisa : So when you moved to Stenbury, was the Station at Niton then made redundant?
Edward : Yes, typical Post Office, it had just been painted because it was due for a paint, so they painted it, knowing full well that it was going to be left. It’s now a private house I believe. I think all those … I haven’t been back there to see what happened to our place or whether it actually did fall down or not but the other buildings have been made into private houses.
Lisa : So, for someone who wouldn’t know then, can you tell me the function of the Radio Station?
Edward : Well, it was a Marine Radio, marine radio communication between the ships coming into the Channel and going up to London and other ports and also it was for safety. We maintained a watch on three different frequencies but it was mainly … we had VHF and medium wave that was being listened to all the time and if we received an SOS or any urgency signal, we then stopped everything else and we carried on, we dealt with that and we passed it using our teleprinters, we passed it on to the Admiralty, Coast Guard and Lloyds, usually Lloyds, and then they would organise the rescue response to it. When the Coast Guard got more active, and the rear guard is encroachment, but they took over the VHF Channel 16, they took over for some of that watch. We were made redundant in a way from that. Also, the medium wave, they kept watch on that. But ships, when satellite communication came in, there was less and less use of radio between ships and shore and they were using satellite communication, so all the Coast Stations throughout the country declined and that was … the Niton one was manned and operated from somewhere else then, it was a satellite and another Station so we all became redundant eventually and I went into … I was sitting on the top of this hill getting rather fed up with life and I went back to sea on the Channel Ferries going across from Portsmouth to France and the Channel Islands.
Lisa : Was the location of the Station important? Why was it in the south part of the Isle of Wight?
Edward : It was very important because if you look at the map and look at St Catherine’s Point and it’s near St Catherine’s Point, it sticks out and Marconi for instance used that for signalling because he could communicate between there and Alum Bay and things like that so it was a very good geographical point, and also because ships coming up they passed that point, I mean St Catherine’s going up to London and anywhere else coming into the Channel and that’s why the Lloyd’s Base was there originally because when ships passed the Lloyd’s Signal Station, they’d communicate and then Lloyd’s Signal Station passes the signal to Lloyd’s in London and that’s how they … there was a newspaper called ‘Lloyd’s List’ which records all the movements of ships all over the World, and that’s how they gathered, in the old days, they gathered information from these sites. There was one at Gibraltar for instance, one at Niton, St Catherine’s they probably called it then I think, and that’s how they kept in touch with the ships in those days before they had radio. We carried on that tradition in many ways because ships passing us used to communicate with us where they were going and we used to pass that information to our headquarters.
10 minutes 4 seconds
Lisa : Could you talk to me a bit about the technology involved in the communications?
Edward : Well, it was … when I went there it was nearly all with the Morse key [makes a tapping noise] which is one of these, and we used to listen on the frequency, the distress frequency was 2182 kilocycles, or KHz as they call it now and we used to keep a watch on there and also keep a watch on Channel 16 VHF, and we used to keep a watch on those frequencies, and if anyone was in trouble, we would hear them and we would stop any other working and just concentrate on … if they were in our area we would coordinate it, otherwise if it was nearer another Station they would have heard about it and they would take over the coordination of it and we would tell everyone else to shut up. When the Coast Guard came in more, they took over coordination and eventually we dropped out of the picture and we just became a communication only, just passing telegrams and phone calls. Most of our work was telegrams and phone calls and that was from the old days when people sent telegrams and also mostly VHF work was telephone calls. We did do telephone calls on medium wave as well, but less of that, although when we were at our prime in Niton Radio, we had five people on at one time, all very busy with a whole list of waiting ships, waiting to be dealt with. It got very busy.
Lisa : Five operators?
Edward : Umm.
Lisa : And what was your area?
Edward : Well, technically we were sort of … there’s another Station up at Portland and there was another one down at Land’s End and we covered in between those two, that middle bit of the Channel. Because Niton was a very radio sensitive area I suppose, it was a very good area for communications and that’s why Marconi used it, we actually could on occasions we used to communicate with ships down in the Mediterranean. We weren’t supposed to, but we did it and it was quite known that if you called, Niton would answer. We got a reputation for always being affable and friendly and we used to help people out. In fact, my last telephone call when I was working at Niton was from a ship in the Mediterranean. He shouldn’t have been communicating via us because we were well out of his range, but I sort of managed to hand work it and I used to switch the receiver off while he was transmitting and switch it back on again so the person at the other end could hear him. It was supposed to be automatic, but we used to bend the rules quite considerably, just to help out.
Lisa : Could you just talk me through an ordinary day? You mentioned about shifts. There was someone on duty was there day and night?
Edward : Oh yes, it was a rather anomalous situation to start with. Because we were part of the Post Office, our hours were governed by the Counter Staff in a Post Office and that was 40 hours a week. Well that was obviously ludicrous because we were working 24 hours, 7 days a week so we had what they called duties and I think there were about 13 duties and we were given a duty each week and it meant we did a shift for instance in the morning, and then there was an afternoon shift and there was an evening from seven ‘til eleven and then eleven ‘til nine I think in the morning. We kept quite a long night watch. We preferred to do that because it meant then that we didn’t have to go in before nine or eleven, so it meant you had an evening to yourself and you didn’t have to get up at the crack of dawn, so we managed to last out from eleven ‘till nine keeping our night watch. It would be two of us on at night in that time and then the day shift used to come in at 9 o’clock all bright eyed and bushy tailed and they would take over from us during the busy time. We got quite busy before they came on. From 8 o’clock onwards, we were quite busy, but we managed to make them wait until the 9 o’clock people came in.
15 minutes
Lisa : And was there a busier time for communications or was it steady?
Edward : Yes it was … I don’t think it went on the calendar, it was just that most people were busy in the morning ‘cos they wanted to report to their offices, whereas the telephone calls we were perhaps more busy in the afternoon or evening because it was more domestic and then we we’d get very busy when the big ships like the Queen Elizabeth came up. We would have about two or three people just working with them, but they were also working with the Post Office Main Station which was at Burnham on Sea and they were working on a different frequency with them, so they had quite a few channels open. The passengers all wanting to make phone calls and make arrangements for getting home, hire cars and so on and so that was a busy time when all the big ships came in. I don’t think there was any other sort of … obviously at Christmas we were quite busy, people wanting to make phone calls home and greet each other. That was quite normal and also telegrams, we had a lot of telegrams during that period.
Lisa : Can you just describe the equipment that you used in detail?
Edward : Well, in detail we had what we called bays in the Radio Station. In the old one we had two receivers and then there would be … the actual transmitters weren’t in the Station itself. We keyed the Station transmitters from the Station remotely. We had some down at Blackgang. There was a group of aerials, I think there are still some there, some aerials there, that was one Station and then we had the receiving aerials round the Station itself, and then the VHF was up on St Boniface, so we had lots of wires, cables if you like, connecting us to all these various sites. We used to tune the transmitters remotely from our Station but when we went up to the new Station, we then had quite a complicated looking bay, you might have seen photographs. We were surrounded by several receivers and several switches, switching from one receiver to another and then switching from the Telephone Exchange we could make several phone calls at once from that position and so we had quite a lot of switches and knobs and things. It looked quite complicated but you weren’t using all of it at any one time so although it looked complicated, we knew what we were doing and so it wasn’t quite as difficult as it looked although I suppose with use … for instance when we were waiting for the night staff to come in, we were doing several things at once and got bits of paper and lists of ships on and rushing around and switching things on trying to cover the whole … because we knew the other ones would come in at 9 o’clock and the public didn’t know we weren’t open fully until 9, so we were trying to cover that hour and make it sound as if we were fully staffed whereas there were only two of us. We thought it was worth it, so we didn’t have to get up early and come in at 8 o’clock and disturb our domestic arrangements.
Lisa : So, how long did you work there in total?
Edward : Well, I joined the Post Office in 1971 and it then became part of British Telecomm but that happened after I’d left, but when I was still there, the Post Office still held it but then they were no longer part of the Civil Service, so we had to have different pensions and different arrangements although we were still governed by the Post Office Clerk’s hours, but having moved up to the new Station in ’75, I left the Post Office eventually in 1978 and that’s when I went back to sea on the cross-channel ferries. So, I was still keeping very much in touch with the Niton Radio. That’s how I got in touch with the Ferries ‘cos we used to have quite a close liaison with them as they were in and out the ports all the time, we used to chat to them, and they told me there was a vacancy there they thought so that was the reason I applied. When I was on the Ferries, I never followed the proper procedure for contacting Niton, I just came up on one of the working channels and say, “Hello” or say something rude and they’d say, “Oh, hello Ted” (laughs) and they never charged me for a call or anything. Although I had a similar arrangement when I was deep sea before I went to Niton. At that time I lived in … my parents lived in Ventnor and we knew one of the chaps that worked at Niton Radio Station and so whenever I came in on the ship, I would tell him where I was and he would then slip in and say, “Hello Ted, I’ll tell your dad you’re on your way” sort of thing and that was all part of it. That’s one of the reasons that made me interested in joining it I think, but unfortunately he had left by the time I joined the Post Office.
21 minutes 29 seconds
Lisa : What was the main kind of shipping through the Solent in the ‘70’s?
Edward : A lot more cargo ships than there are now and there are still a few passenger liners which we have now, ferries and a lot more cargo ships and tankers, but of course the ships were a lot smaller then so there were more of them. The cargo ships have mainly gone now. They’ve been replaced by container ships which if you see them are huge things if you ever see them going round the Island. They’re getting bigger and bigger all the time. They’re sort of 1600 going up to 2000 containers now, they’re huge and they’ve gone now. All the cargo ships are all gone now, the ships I sailed on, which had quite big crews. We had a crew of about 50 on the cargo ship and about 6 or 7000 tonnes. These enormous things about 200,000 tonnes have got about 10 or 11. It’s changed completely. And they’re not communicating with the Coast Stations. They’ve got these satellite communications now and the office can just pick up their phone and ring the ship, wherever it is in the world and whatever time of day it is, regardless of whether the Captain is in bed or not. Some little boy in the office can ring him up and say, “Captain, we want this”, but in our day they would send a telegram to us in the Radio Station and then we would pass it on using the Morse key to the ship, so it was a much slower process then and then the Captain would reply to it in the same way. He would give a message to the Radio Operator although they preferred to be called Radio Officers, on the ship and he would send back to us and we would then, using our teleprinter, would forward it on to the destination. It was a much slower process in those days and some of the telegrams we received were very long. It took ages to receive and it took quite a long time to send obviously, whereas nowadays they just ‘oomp’ straight through. The Radio Officer’s Association, of which I’m a member, they published two books which were called ‘The Long Silence Forms’ and that’s showing what it was like and what it’s like now. You can go on to a receiver now and listen on what was the main calling and distress frequency of 500 kilocycles or Hertz and it’s quiet. When I was at sea it was a babble, all you could hear was [makes noise of chatter] like that all the time. It was complete babble and you had a job picking out the Station you wanted to hear and that’s why they used to have silence periods, which was from 15 to 18 past the hour, and 45 – 48 past the hour on 500 kilocycles and that was a silence period then and then you could listen. If somebody had a very weak signal or a long way away and they were sinking and they hadn’t got very much power, you could pick up the signal and then you would answer them and deal with distress in that way, but that’s all gone now, as I say you can listen on that frequency now and it’s completely dead, just silence. It’s most peculiar.
25 minutes 38 seconds
[phone rings]
Edward : Sorry, talking about modern communication (laughs). There is a tape or a DVD I suppose of when the last signal from a Coast Station is sent on 500 kilocycles and it’s rather good because it shows the different Coast Stations all joining and answering this signal, but it’s all done in Morse so if you don’t know Morse it’s just a babble, but it’s very interesting to hear. I used to have a copy, I don’t know what I did with it. Wish I’d still got it, I would have given it to you.
Lisa : About what time then did the Morse Code technology die out?
Edward : Well, it was dying out then. As I say I left the Post Office and went back to sea in 1978, and we were starting to lose it then. In the early ‘80’s, we had similar sort of communication that they’ve got now only less sophisticated. It was starting to come in in the 80’s and Radio Officers were made redundant in the early ‘80’s but some of them stayed on doing technical work and maintenance work and they converted to do it but many of us left. As I say, I was made redundant from the British Rail because the ferry I was on was Sealink and I was made redundant in ’86 I think it was and there were very few Radio Operators left then.
Lisa : Did you have communications with the lighthouses on the Island?
Edward : Yes, we did. They used to send weather reports to us, well not so much the … the one at St Catherine’s didn’t because they were on shore they’d got a landline and they could send their telephone calls and things, but we used to have a regular call from the Nab Tower, which was manned. I think it had three people on board at any one time and they used to regularly call to us. One of the Operators actually lived in Niton so he rather fancied himself on recognising our voices so that he would call us up and its Niton Radio and Nab Tower and we’d tell him to go to a working channel where we could receive his weather forecast, but then he used to use our Christian names ‘cos he thought he … so we used to have a great game of disguising our voices (laughs). There was one very famous … if you ever mentioned Niton Radio to anyone who’s at sea, they would always say, “Oh it’s that man from Niton Radio, ‘Niton Radio, Niton Radio’” He was quite a young chap actually although he sounded very old and his name was Rodney Bets, so that was one of our favourite voices that we put on when this chap from the Nab Tower used answer, we used to say, “Nab Tower, go to …” and he’d say, “Hello Rodney.” We’d say, “It’s not Rodney” (laughs) and one of characters was a joker. He actually went as far as talking into a teapot back to this Nab Tower. It sounds all very silly but when you get a group of men together they do turn into silly boys.
Lisa : And the Needles, did you have contact with the Needles?
Edward : No, not as far as the lighthouse went, but the Coast Guard Station at the Needles, and we used to have quite a lot of contact with them, but that would normally be on telephone, not very often by radio.
30 minutes
Lisa : How many Coast Guards Stations were there around the Island during that time?
Edward : Well, the main one with radio was at the Needles. There were several others, but they weren’t equipped with radio, not in the same way. Actually, when I left the Post Office and went over to the ferries, I moved to Hayling Island, and from 1980 to 1983, I was actually in the Coast Guard, an Auxiliary Coast Guard, and I used to try and do things more sensibly then ‘cos we thought they were … they used to make a drama out of anything they could, the Coast Guard, that’s how they made their living. They used to dramatise everything to make it sound more serious than it actually was. If a ship had just lost its power, they would call us up and we would try not to get the Coast Guard involved because we thought it was a waste of money (laughs) whereas they, the Coast Guard would say, “Make a phone call, have you got so and so …” they’d make a call and then they’d launch lifeboats and things to tow this man in when we thought it was a complete waste of money. None of the members of the Niton Radio staff I think would have anything to do with lifeboat. We thought it was a complete waste of money. We thought it was being used as a ‘get you home service’ for yachties, so we didn’t like the waste of money that went on there whereas the Coast Guard of course, that was part of their role if you like, you know to look after ships but they used to dramatise it just to justify their own existence I think. Well we thought so. Perhaps looking back on it, we went a bit too far the other way sometimes and I know on one occasion a ship came up and he said it … what had happened he was a motor boat and he’d gone over to France for his duty frees … well, he’d been over to France for a few days and on his way back to the UK, he realised he hadn’t got his duty free, all his alcohol and cigarettes, so he went back into Cherbourg and got them and came off again. But he hadn’t bothered to refuel, so he was running out of fuel and he actually ran out of fuel on the way home. So, he called us up and he said he was in trouble. Well, we said, “You’ve just run out of fuel, you’re not in danger or anything are you?” “Well, no I suppose not.” So, I said, “Well, we’ll see if we can get you a tow, is that what you want?” “Yes.” So, we got in touch with somebody in Cowes who offered him a tow and we put them together, but he didn’t like the terms, because he was going to be in hundreds of pounds for this man to come from Cowes and tow him home. So, he said could he have a phone call to the Coast Guard? We couldn’t stop him doing that and of course as soon as that happened the Coast Guard wants the lifeboat to tow him in and he turned up and this yachtie was a friend of the lifeboat Coxswain, you know, the launching authority so we deplored this sort of thing going on, but I think it still goes on.
Lisa : And I’m assuming that he didn’t have to pay them?
Edward : No, well I believe that some of these yachties do make a donation to the Lifeboat, but they don’t have to. It’s the Lifeboat’s job to go out and bring them in. I think sometimes that the Lifeboat might have a little word that it would be nice if they did make a donation, but they don’t have to. To us it was so ludicrous.
Lisa : Were there any notable events? You mentioned about SOS calls came through sometimes. Is there anything that sticks in your mind?
Edward : I remember a Russian ship going down, that was rather hard going because they used to send very fast Morse and very difficult to read Morse and they tried to keep things within their own little community ‘cos a lot of Russian trawlers and that took a lot of organising, but otherwise I can’t actually remember any serious … there was nothing like the tanker that went aground down the west coast. We didn’t have anything like that, not while I was there, but every distress call was serious obviously. We used to mobilise … the Admiralty used to run the any ship. We couldn’t communicate with Royal Navy ships funny enough. They used to communicate with their own system, so that if we wanted to get in touch with any of the ships for distress purposes, we used to have to send our messages to the Admiralty and they communicated with the ship although he was just off the coast possibly. And then he might break silence and come and talk to us, but normally we didn’t talk to Navy ships
35 minutes 23 seconds
Lisa : Did they have their own frequency?
Edward : They’ve got their own frequencies and their own systems, but we didn’t think much of their radio procedure because they used different things all together and again they were getting more automated then so that when they communicated with us, it was a different system to them and one of our colleagues said that if Nelson had gone into Trafalgar with a VHF radio, the Royal Navy would be experts in communication (laughs) but they weren’t and they made a mountain out of a molehill. For instance, on one occasion, we had a foreign ship had come and asked … he needed a tow and we’d sent a distress out and this Royal Navy ship communicated with us and we put him in touch, and he was a Minehunter, so this Minehunter was put in touch with this ship and it was a foreigner, and I’ll always remember this. This Royal Navy Officer saying, “Hello, this is Charlie Oscar here” which meant Commanding Officer, “Charlie Oscar, would you happen to have a sort of rope?” so I broke in and said to this foreign ship, “Have you a towrope?” “Yes, I have a towrope.” That’s all he was trying to ask but his procedure was so awful. I believe now there is a list of English … radio English so it’s all straight forward and simple, whereas, “Would you happen by any chance to have …?” It was ridiculous. If he’d just said, “Have you got a towrope?” the foreigner would have understood immediately, but he couldn’t. All this Charlie Oscar nonsense is silly.
Lisa : What about sort of activity around the Island itself, around the waters of the Island? Was your communication mainly beyond that area?
Edward : No, it was mainly the Isle of Wight, it was mainly the Channel. Ships coming up the Channel and going down the Channel, because the Radio Station I mentioned at Burnham on Sea, Portishead Radio it was called, they covered the high frequency band so that that was longer distance, so the Niton Radio was one of the shorter distance Radio Stations covering all round the UK and they started at Land’s End and working it’s way up, right round Scotland and back to the Island so that we covered our own little patch technically, and anything outside the western approaches when they went further south, then they communicated through the long range system which was Portishead Radio. We used to pass everything we got from these small ships, we’d pass the message to … they’d pass what they called a ‘TR’ which was ‘Traffic Report’, they’d pass a TR to Portishead Radio and they kept a big long list of where all British ships were and then if someone sent a telegram, paying in to Portishead Radio, they would look on their list and see where that ship was and they’d send it down to the nearest Station. We would then get a telegram from them, which we would call up … we had what they called Traffic Lists. We used to send them every hour. We’d send this list of ships that we got messages on or ‘traffic’ as we called it for and then they would call us, and we’d send it to them. That’s how they knew if there was anything for them. The business of this TR was to tell the Portishead Radio which Station to send it to. And so, we used to pass … the ship would obviously pass up the Channel and Portishead Radio would realise where he was and he’d send it to the next one then, which was Northforeland which was the one going up the Channel and Land’s End was the one going down. It was a good system in its day, but then it worked but of course nowadays its not necessary. Everybody’s got mobile phones now and it’s one of the things I can remember, we had a funny distress and it arose because a man used his mobile phone. He didn’t have a radio, or didn’t know how to use it, and he was in a small boat and he phoned somebody using his mobile phone. That was very interesting because nobody knew anything about mobile phones then. It was a firm called Cell Net, I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of them. They were a sort of pioneers I suppose of mobile phones and that’s in the days when the phone was about the size of a brick and you had a big battery to go with it, and this man was … he got in touch with us via this mobile phone in a backwards way. Well after that I was so intrigued, I got in touch with this chap and asked him about it and asked him. “What’s this mobile phone thing?” And he explained it all and actually offered me the chance to have the rights to sell mobile phones on the Isle of Wight, and I thought ‘what a load of rubbish, nobody will want them’ (laughs) and that’s one of the big regrets of my life. If I’d taken over that franchise, Cell Net telephones … he said, “Well Doctors need them” and all this and I thought I can’t imagine a Doctor lugging this lot around so I didn’t do it and also there was a financial requirement that you’d have to put in money to start up premises and have a shop and I hadn’t got the money then, so I suppose if I’d realised what it was going to be like, how mobile phones would take off I could have raised the money, gone to the Bank and got the money ‘cos I knew the Bank Manager very well and God know what would have happened. It was Cell Net, I don’t know what happened to Cell Net. I think it was taken over by one of the other companies, but at that time that was one of my big regrets ‘cos as I say that was the thin edge of the wedge really as far as our sort of communication was. This is one of the Morse keys from the old Radio Station and the more modern ones didn’t look quite the same although they worked the same way.
42 minutes 48 seconds
Lisa : Could you talk me through how it works?
Edward : Well yes, [demonstrates pressing the key] there are gaps in the … basically it’s a piece of metal between two contacts and when you push it one way it breaks the contact and then when you let it go again it makes the contact so the purpose of the lower contact is to actually send signals to the transmitter which are then transmitted and the upper contact stops your signal going into the receiver so you don’t blow the aerial up. The aerial was connected to the same frequency so if you do that you stop the aerial, you close the aerials and the receiver doesn’t receive so it [taps the key] works on how long … you’ve got dots and dashes, a dot is quick and then the dash, you hold it longer. It’s a very basic thing, in fact you could do it with a piece of wire, I’ve seen people doing it with a saw blade using that as a Morse key. These were overtaken by what they called side keys which operated in a similar sort of way, but they moved from side to side instead of up and down and you could send a lot faster with them.
Lisa : So, how old is this one?
Edward : It must be, well, I don’t know. It must be in the ‘50’s at least. Perhaps it was going after the War, I don’t know. I’ve no idea how old it is. It might even be the ‘40’s.
Lisa : But it’s the same as the one that you would have used at Niton?
Edward : It’s similar. In fact, the one at Niton would have been more modern than this.
Lisa : OK.
Edward : We actually used a smaller version, so this was one of the ones that was originally at Niton. There are some photographs on the web about Niton Radio, showing the houses that I lived in. Some of them on the Isle of Wight … there’s an Isle of Wight Heritage Group on Facebook and I saw some photographs on there of the Radio Station when it was first set up and it was a Lloyd’s Signal Station as a matter of fact I think and the house I lived in was quite clearly … you could see that at the back of the photograph. Three stories with this big upstairs overhanging and it showed you the rear entry. That had gone when I lived in there. There was no access to the upstairs at all. It doesn’t sound very interesting looking back on it now but the one interesting thing about Niton Radio is the fact that the operating frequency was 464 kilohertz and all our domestic radios had a frequency in there which they called the intermediate frequency, where most of the amplification took place and that frequency was 465, so Niton Radio’s frequency was very close to that and I’ve been in the north of England and listened to domestic radio and I could hear Niton Radio coming through that and that was naturally all the people who lived around there, it was one of the crosses they had to bear was their radio signal being mucked up by our transmission. It was sometimes worse that others because it sounds very technical, but when we were on the 500 kilocycles, which is the International calling and distress frequency, we operated on what they called ‘MCW’ which was Modified CW which is continuous wave and then when we went to the working frequency, which was 464, we were supposed to switch off the modulation and go straight to CW which didn’t interfere with the domestic radios but there were some Operators at Niton that were too lazy to flick the switch and so they were transmitting on MCW on 464 and that used to blast through everyone’s domestic radio all around. In fact, on one occasion, I knew this bloke who was too lazy to do it, so I called the Post Office Interference people and they came to my house. It was all a put-up job. They came to my house and they listened to my radio and they made a phone call to the Radio Station and the Officer in Charge there, they said, “Will you switch to CW” and when the signal went quiet, there was hardly interference, “Thank you very much, thank you” so that the Officer in Charge then put a little notice on there saying ‘You MUST switch to CW when you go to 464’ and this man who was the culprit, he was a very cautious man, he didn’t want to get into trouble with the Management so he actually obeyed this ruling then, but he wouldn’t do it when we told him. Anyone in the country could hear Niton and Niton was famous because of this interference and and anyone who knew Morse would say, “Oh yes, I heard you.” GNI was the call sign and, “Oh I heard GNI.” You could hear it throughout the country on a normal domestic radio. Of course, people haven’t got them anymore, they’re all on VHF.
49 minutes 28 seconds
Lisa : It sounds like it was quite important work that you were doing in that period?
Edward : It was, we thought it was. It was useful and very important, and it meant ships could keep in touch with their offices and they’re home and their families, and also we maintained this distress watch. Before the Coast Guard had radio, we were maintaining distress watch on these frequencies and it was important work. As I say, as time went by our role diminished and the Coast Guard took over the distress working, and satellites took over the signals and radio communication and we dwindled. I think initially the Radio Stations dwindled throughout the country. Two or three Stations were controlled from one spot remotely and we thought that was a retrograde step because if a ship said to us he was off a certain rock round our way, we knew where he was, whereas somebody up in the north of Scotland where it was controlled from, had no idea, but of course I think the Coast Guard have got the same problem now. They’re remotely controlled all receivers so that it’s the same if you phone up and report a leak in the water, you have to tell them your post code, and the same thing happened then, you had to give your actual position and then they’d look on a screen and find where you were, whereas we had local knowledge and so did the local Coast Guard, but it’s all gone now.
Lisa : What’s interesting is the way that technology has changed so much now that the buildings and the technology and the methods have changed completely.
Edward : Yes, they have. I’ve got a tie which has got a dinosaur on it, no, a dodo on it, sorry, and we are an extinct species of Radio Officers. Although the Radio Officers Association has got about 300 members worldwide, they’re all getting old and it’s diminishing in number, but many of them in the Radio Officers Association are amateurs and amateurs do keep Morse going. They still communicate with Morse. I haven’t bothered because, well we used to think well, were professionals, were not amateurs (laughs). I remember when I was on a ship, somebody came to the Radio Room and said to my Chief, he said, “Oh, any amateurs in here?” and he said, “No, were all professionals” and that was our attitude. We couldn’t really see much point in spending a whole day listening to radio and then going home and doing it again. Especially if it was only somebody in Kent or somewhere whereas we’d been communicating with people all over world.
Lisa : I think that’s partly why it’s important to record these memories.
Edward : Yes, I think it is. Of course, youngsters would have no conception of what it’s like. They can make a phone call. For instance, I talk to my daughter in Florida frequently on my mobile phone and WhatsApp and send messages and talk to her on the phone and send pictures to her but that’s just inconceivable when I was a … that’s only in the ‘70’s. Everything was done you know, by radio. It was sometimes very hard work if, as I said, there was a lot of interference from other ships and other Stations and mechanical noise and it was hard work. It’s quite skilful work. Well, we thought so (laughs).
Lisa : I haven’t asked you actually about the training you received to be able to become an Operator.
Edward : Well, I did that before I went to sea. I went to … actually it was Southampton. Although it sounds posh it was Southampton University. That was in 1954 and Southampton University had opened about two years earlier than that and our course was run at the back of the University in some old sheds, and I think there was an old Laundry building and some sheds, and we had our … our course was run there to pass the Post Master’s General Certificate. There was two classes, a 2nd Class and 1st Class. Initially I took the 2nd Class. Then I went to sea as a Junior Radio Officer and after about two years, I came back to Southampton, by which time the course was now in the Technical College and then I passed and had a 1st Class Post Master General Certificate and then I was at sea then until I left in early ‘60’s I think and went into the Diplomatic Wireless Service and then after a couple of tours abroad with them, I then joined the Post Office and that’s how I came to the Island. But actually, I went to sea in 1966 and this, we’re talking about 1970 odd, so I’d done other things in between. No, I went to sea in ’56, that’s right, I went to sea in 1956 and I left the sea in ’64 and then joined the Diplomatic Wireless Service for seven years and then joined the Post Office for seven or eight years and then I joined British Rail at Sealink, before I was made redundant.
56 minutes 18 seconds
Lisa : Where did Sealink Ferries go to and from?
Edward : Well, I was mainly on the Portsmouth to Channel Islands and Cherbourg but there was also Weymouth, I did a few trips from Weymouth. Portsmouth was a new service. The Weymouth to Channel Islands was the old one and then they started a new service from Portsmouth and so I chose to live in, near … I chose that because at that time I lived in the isle of Wight and it was more convenient to travel to Portsmouth than it was to Weymouth and so that’s how I came to be on that run. Initially, we only went to the Channel Islands. Then we started going to Cherbourg as well. We did what they called a triangular service. We did Channel Islands, Cherbourg and back to Portsmouth which was quite interesting. Because they had some legal problems, they stopped running to the Channel Islands. We only did Cherbourg from then on and that was the decline of that run and in fact Sealink pulled out of Portsmouth and that’s why I was made redundant, but there were very few jobs for Radio Officers going at that time and I had back trouble as well, so I was unfit for sea service and I left the sea.
Lisa : So, where did you finish up in your career?
Edward : Well, actually because of this unfit for sea service, I started getting a pension and I went to live in France for eight years and then when restoring an old house and then came back to Oxford and then came back to the Isle of Wight again in the early 2000’s, 2002 came back to live in Bembridge and then we’ve been in the Isle of Wight since, so my career stopped when I left the Sealink in ’86 and I haven’t been gainfully employed since then. I’ve done a lot of volunteering work, the Red Cross, Age Concern, National Trust, you name it I’ve done it and I still volunteer with National Trust, Oxfam and also the local museum in Ryde, so I try and keep myself busy.
Lisa : Well, thank you very much. It’s been really interesting.
Edward : As I say, not knowing how much you know because not many people knew about the Niton Radio Station, not younger people don’t anyway, and when you talk about a Radio Station they automatically think of music won’t they? We weren’t DJ’s (laughs).
Recording ends
59 minutes 50 seconds
Transcribed February 2019
Chris Litton