ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on submarine telegraph accounts – The Atlantic Telegraph, which recounts the third unsuccessful attempt to construct the transatlantic line, and The Ocean Telegraph to India, which describes the successful effort to install a submarine cable between India and England. The recursive relationship between representations of telegraphy and traditional narrative structures can be seen in texts that describe the construction of submarine telegraph cables that connected distant parts of the empire. Submarine telegraph texts form a distinct sub-genre of the technological travel narrative with systematic generic traits. These texts are part of a larger genre of technological travel narratives that describe the creation of the imperial infrastructure to support travel and communication. The chapter also focuses on the romance plots of the electricians, effecting the return to domesticity that is characteristic of adventure fiction, but even the conventional feature is significantly altered by electrical technology.
