• On August 5, 1914, a British ship, the Alert, set sail from Dover with the mission of cutting off all of Germany’s communications with the world by sabotaging their undersea cables.
• A worldwide system of intercepting communications known as “censorship” was born to prevent the communication of strategic intelligence between the enemy and their agents.
• Over 50,000 messages per day were handled by the network of 180 censors at U.K. offices.
At the height of the First World War, Great Britain was in possession of the world’s most advanced undersea telegraph cable system, which spanned across the entire globe. To prevent the communication of strategic intelligence between the enemy and their agents, the British government deployed a man to the cable station at Porthcurno in Cornwall, who was given the job title of “censor”. On August 4, 1914, the day before a British ship, the Alert, set sail from the port of Dover with a mission of cutting off all of Germany’s communications with the world by sabotaging their undersea cables, this censor was in place.
With the Alert’s successful mission, a worldwide system of intercepting communications, known as “censorship” was born. Numerous other censors were then deployed across the British Empire, from Hong Kong to Malta to Singapore, to ensure that all incoming and outgoing information was monitored. This network of censors was able to handle up to 50,000 messages per day, and their main goal was to prevent the communication of any sensitive information between the enemy and their agents.
The censorship system put in place by the British government was highly effective in disrupting the communication of strategic intelligence between the enemy and their agents. It also provided the British with a wealth of information about the enemy’s activities, which was invaluable in helping them to gain the upper hand in the war. As such, censorship was an invaluable tool in the First World War, and its success demonstrated the power of information control and manipulation in the modern era.
