Edward Sandle on Navigation

Lisa: And what was your area?

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.