Edward Sandle on Communication
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 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.