How Cape Race, N.L., helped North America get its news — by fishing it out of the sea

Theresa O’Leary had doubts when she recalled the story her father told her about the news coming to Cape Race, N.L., on boats from the U.K.

“He’d say, Oh, the Associated Press had a news boat at Cape Race chasing after the news [that was] being thrown overboard by those steamships coming from England,” said O’Leary.

“And of course, as a child, I thought that was newspapers floating on the ocean. That’s what I envisioned. So it didn’t make any sense. I thought it was a tall tale.”

She tucked it away, but came back to it later.

“I became a journalist with CBC, actually, and in my early 20s, and I did the research. I had to go deep in the archives, but I confirmed that it was true, that there actually was this AP news operation right here at Cape Race in the mid-1800s. It was unbelievable. “

Now, O’Leary is sharing what she found in a book called Race to the Cape. The book shines a light on how residents of the southeastern Avalon Peninsula helped shape news coverage as we know it today.

Race to the Cape tells the story of Newfoundland’s crucial role in bringing news from abroad to North America with a relatively new idea — a wire service called the Associated Press that telegraphed news to newspapers that paid for it.

AP was founded in 1846. A decade later, the six U.S. newspapers involved pooled their resources get all the latest news from Europe first and pay less for telegram services.

Cape Race, located on the Avalon’s southeastern tip, was central to the scheme because that’s where the news from Europe was dropped off in cannisters — thrown into the ocean by passing ships on their way from London to New York.

“Well, it’s location, location, location, you know. Cape Race is in the middle between London and New York. It also is first landfall in North America for many ships coming from Europe,” she said.

At Cape Race, a crew of five men in a whaling boat, rowing offshore, scoured the waves for those cannisters. They fished them out and then the contents were telegraphed on to New York.

“It could be news about wars. It could be correspondence between the Queen and the president of the United States,” said O’Leary.

“So the boys would then telegraph that news to New York City within a matter of hours as opposed to the days it would take for the ship to arrive,” she said.

That’s why it’s called a wire service. For a decade, from the mid-1850s to the mid-1860s, the news of the world was sent on telegraph wires from Newfoundland.

It happened before Newfoundland was part of Canada, before Canada was a country.

“It’s a similar story to today. We think the faster we get the news, the better we’ll be and is that true? I don’t know. But that really is the thing that drove it,” said O’Leary.

Of course, the Associated Press still exists but Cape Race’s role disappeared when trans-Atlantic telegraph cable was laid.

“It meant they didn’t need to drop the canisters of news off here at Cape Race,” said O’Leary.

This book, built on years of research, tells the story of how it came to be and why in compelling detail.

“It’s fabulous. We’re so excited,” said Gertie Molloy, chair of the Cape Race Heritage Committee, who was at the launch of O’Leary’s book at Cape Race on Wednesday.

For the people of Cape Race and nearby Portugal Cove South, it’s important that this story is being told.

“I been around a while but I still learned a lot. I knew about the story about the cannisters but not the whole story right from the beginning to the end of the era. So that was great. It’s great for us to have it, and to be able to share that history with visitors,” she said.