Signor Marconi's Magic Box by Gavin Weightman

Author:Gavin Weightman
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Published: 2010-06-28T21:00:00+00:00

24

Defeat in the Yellow Sea

Late in December 1903 the White Star Line’s Majestic, which had recently been refitted after serving as a troopship in the Boer War, eased out of Liverpool docks en route for New York. Among the first-class passengers were the two men who regarded themselves as the foremost exponents of wireless telegraphy in the United States, Professor Reginald Fessenden and Lee de Forest. They were not on speaking terms, as Fessenden was suing de Forest for infringement of his patent on the new electrolytic detector, or barreter. Both were returning home after exploring the possibility of establishing their wireless systems in Britain. Fessenden had been looking for a site to set up a station for his transatlantic venture, while de Forest had been taking part in a competitive demonstration of wireless for the General Post Office. Neither man was in a very happy mood: Fessenden was being offered a remote site in Scotland by the Post Office, and de Forest felt he had been rejected by British ‘hauteur’, as he had received no orders for his equipment.

However, de Forest’s mood changed when he met aboard ship a British war correspondent, Captain Lionel James, who was on the first leg of a journey out to the Far East, where war was brewing between Russia and Japan over disputed territories in Manchuria and Korea. Captain James was a classic product of the British Raj, a former tea-planter and racehorse-owner. Four years earlier he had taken a gamble by offering himself as a special war correspondent for The Times. He had reported on the Boer War and had been with General Kitchener in the Sudan, where he had made a name for himself as a front-line trooper in the world’s press corps.

Though both de Forest and James liked to claim credit for having the idea of using wireless to report the Russo-Japanese War, it is most likely the plot was hatched by chance on the Majestic when the two met and fell into conversation. James had heard of de Forest that October when he had been in New York, and had been given the impression, probably by Abraham White, that the American was way out in front when it came to wireless telegraphy. De Forest, in his autobiography, claims to have heard of James, and to have persuaded him to use his wireless in the Far East. On the voyage to New York it was agreed that if James could persuade The Times to put up the money, de Forest would provide wireless equipment and engineers to establish a station somewhere on the China coast. James anticipated that if war broke out much of the naval action would take place in the Yellow Sea, which is enclosed by the coastlines of Manchuria, Korea and China. To the north was the Russian naval base of Port Arthur. If he could charter a reasonably swift steamer and get permission from the Japanese navy to cruise among its ships, there was a good

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