Artie Moore
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Arthur Moore (1887 – January 20, 1949), was a British wireless operator who heard a distress signal from RMS Titanic before news of the disaster arrived in the UK.
In the early hours of April 15, 1912, in the loft of the 17th century Gelligroes Mill, near Blackwood, Monmouthshire, the old wireless experimenter using crude radio apparatus received a faint signal in Morse Code:
“CQD CQD SOS de MGY Position 41.44N 50.24W. Require immediate assistance. Come at once. We have struck an iceberg. Sinking….We are putting the women off in the boats…..”
Moore continued to copy out the Morse signals he was receiving: “We are putting the passengers off in small boats” “Women and children in boats, cannot last much longer…..”
Then came the final, desperate, signal: “Come as quickly as possible old man; our engine-room is filling up to the boilers”.
Artie breathlessly relayed the dreadful news to the locals and to the local constabulary, who did not believe his news. Two days later, both the locals received confirmation through the local and national press that it was true. The newspapers also confirmed – as Artie had claimed – that the new ‘SOS’ distress signal had been used by the Titanic’s radio operators along with the usual ‘CQD’ signal, thus proving that Artie had indeed received the signals from the doomed liner.
At the time - in 1912 - it was understood that the range of Titanic’s wireless was 400 miles in daylight, and possibly up to 2000 miles in darkness. It now became clear that reception of radio waves up to 3000 miles was not only possible, but had been achieved that tragic night, by a young, relatively uneducated wireless experimenter using nothing more than his own crude home-made equipment.
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[edit] From humble beginnings
Artie Moore was born in Pontllanfraith, the eldest son of local miller, William Moore. At a young age Artie was involved in an accident at the mill, which resulted in the loss of the lower part of one of his legs, and for the rest of his life, he wore a wooden leg.
By the age of ten, Artie had developed an interest in amateur engineering and using his own initiative he adapted a bicycle to cater for his wooden leg, and locals recall him rattling around the village on it, making a nuisance of himself. As he grew, he became what is known as a ‘character’ in the locality, and was constantly playing tricks of all sorts.
At some point prior to the year 1909, most likely in his early teenage years, Artie, a keen amateur engineer, using a hand made lathe driven by the water-wheel at the mill, built a working model of a horizontal steam engine.
He entered the model in a competition in The Model Engineer magazine. He received as his prize a book by Sir Oliver Lodge entitled Modern Views Of Magnetism And Electricity, which awakened his interest in wireless.
[edit] Home-made wireless station
Working at Gelligroes Mill in Pontllanfraith near Blackwood, he soon began erecting wire aerials and building his rudimentary radio station, consisting of a coherer-based receiver and a spark-gap transmitter. It was his considerable engineering spirit that enabled him to store electricity in his batteries via a generator coupled to the mill wheel itself. The same generator was also used to charge batteries for the local farms which were at that time not connected to the mains supply.
Artie was almost continually experimenting with wireless by this time, often defying his father and staying up late into the early hours, sitting at his station listening to the signals emanating from ships, both naval and merchant, travelling the coastal waters around Wales, the south-west of England, as well as stations on the Continent.
Sometimes, in an attempt to improve reception he would relocate his station and set it up at a farm high up on Mynyddislwyn.
Using the contemporary although basic spark-gap transmitter technology of the time, Artie together with his friend Richard Jenkins, an electrical engineer at the local coal mine, made what was probably the first use in Wales of amateur wireless for business purposes.
Having set up a second transmitting and receiving station at Ty Llwyd farm, owned by Richard’s father which was located approximately three and a half miles south of Gelligroes at Ynysddu in the direction of Newport, Artie received an order over the air for grain to be delivered from the mill to the farm.
This would have been around 1910, but you can’t help but wonder what they would make of today’s business radio, mobile telephones, or even ordering over the Internet!
[edit] Front-page news in 1911
A further exciting development took place when Artie made the front page of the London newspaper The Daily Sketch after he intercepted the Italian government’s Declaration Of War on Libya in 1911.
In 1912, Artie was 26 years old and his wireless construction knowledge and skills had improved to such an extent that he was able to build more sensitive receiving equipment and he therefore began to receive transmissions on a regular basis, often relaying the information to the locals sometimes many days before it appeared in the national press.
But it was his reception of the Titanic’s distress call which propelled Artie into a career that was to take him from that little mill in Wales and on to greater things within the realms of early wireless development.
In the summer of 1912, Artie’s activities and the publicity surrounding him following the Titanic disaster soon led to him coming to the attention of the then Monmouthshire Education Committee, who offered him a scholarship to the British School of Telegraphy in Clapham, London, so he left to embark on his studies in the world of science and wireless communication.
[edit] Enter Marconi
After studying for just three months, Artie was advised by the Principal there to enter for a Government examination in Wireless Telegraphy and Morse Code, in which he was successful.
It was at this time that Artie’s activities, not least his reception of the Titanic’s distress calls, came to the attention of Guglielmo Marconi, the ‘father of wireless’ himself. One local resident wrote to Marconi to inform him of Artie’s achievement.
Marconi then came to Gelligroes to meet Artie and to discuss his work and his experiments, and he invited Artie to join the Marconi Company as a draughtsman.
By 1914, Artie was transferred to the Ship Equipment Department of the Marconi Company, and on the outbreak of the First World War he was engaged as a technician in ‘special Admiralty fittings’ – working on the armed merchant ships which operated clandestinely on the open seas and were known as ‘Q’ ships.
He also supervised the installation of wireless equipment on the Dreadnought-class battleships HMS Invincible and HMS Inflexible which steamed the 8,000 miles south to the Falkland Islands in 1914, to face down a German naval threat to the south Atlantic islands.
Connected with the Admiralty through the Marconi Company, Artie later became assistant to Captain H.J. Round (who was himself Chief Assistant to Guglielmo Marconi), and he worked with Captain Round on the further development of the thermionic radio valve without which advancements in radio could not have taken place.
[edit] Peace-time activities
Following the cessation of hostilities and the end of the Great War in 1918, Artie Moore was appointed to the Marconi Company’s Liverpool establishment. There he took charge of the newly-formed Ship Equipment Department where the latest and most up to date transmitters were being fitted.
In 1922 he supervised and oversaw the fitting of the first trawler to be equipped with wireless telegraphy equipment.
A year later he was transferred from the Marconi Company to the Marconi International Marine Communication Company and their establishment at Avonmouth, where he was appointed Manager.
[edit] Echometer
Not content simply to ‘manage’, Artie’s innovative and inventive spirit led him to patent a very early form of Sonar (called the ‘Echometer’) in 1932, and, as is quoted in the following excerpt from his obituary written by Councillor Richard Vines, Headmaster of Pontllanfraith Technical School: “…..his inventive mind gave to science many devices by which he will be remembered as one who succeeded through industry…..’
‘…..His Alvis car was fitted with an apparatus which would record on a dial the efficiency of petrol at varying speeds with various loads through all gears…….”''
Again one can’t help but wonder what Artie would have made of today’s computer controlled vehicles with their digital petrol consumption indicators – no dials pointers or analogue scales – maybe that’s another story……!
Artie remained at Marconi’s Avonmouth establishment until his retirement in 1947, but by 1948, with his health failing he moved to Jamaica to recuperate. He was 62, and would never return to Wales, his homeland.
After only six months in Jamaica he left for England, and on Thursday the 20th of January 1949 he died in a Bristol convalescent home.
In 1949 Monmouthshire Councillor Richard Vine’s public appreciation of Artie Moore concluded with the words: “Gelligroes has invariably been coupled with Islwyn the poet and philosopher, and now it also has associations with the world of science”
[edit] Modern times
But despite contributing greatly to the advancement of radio in those early days, Artie Moore’s pioneering efforts in wireless communications remain relatively little known, even within his own locality.
However, the inspiration he gave to budding wireless enthusiasts in his local area led to the creation in 1927 of the Blackwood Transmitters Club, which later became the Blackwood Amateur Radio Society, which still exists to this day.
Today, Artie’s mill at Gelligroes stands silent and idle, and is now used as a store for materials for the candlemakers workshop nearby.
A group of local amateur radio enthusiasts are creating an ‘Artie Moore archive’ and continue to search out information regarding this sadly unsung, but remarkable and extraordinary Welshman, in order to tell the full story of Artie, of his connection with the historic Titanic disaster and of his exploits in early wireless communication.
They have also periodically set up an amateur radio station at the Gelligroes Mill, transmitting with the callsign MW0MNX (Artie’s own station’s original callsign had been ‘MNX’), and Artie Moore’s mill has, for the first time in nearly one hundred years, once again reverberated to the magical sound of Morse Code.
[edit] References
- Daily Sketch 1911,
- Merthyr Express 1949.
- South Wales Argus 1949
- Practical Wireless magazine 2004
