In his 2001 study of global information networks, Yrko Kaukiainen lamented that it ‘is commonly believed that not much happened in the transmission of information before the introduction of the electric telegraph, which has even been regarded as the start of a communications revolution’ (Kaukiainen 2001: 2). This contention has been reinforced by both popular and scholarly histories of nineteenth-century news: both Tom Standage's The Victorian Internet (1999) and Daniel Walker Howe's What Hath God Wrought (2007) give titular prominence to the technology, while Jonathan Silberstein-Loeb's The International Distribution of News centres around the device, noting its socioeconomic role in equalising access to overseas news (Silberstein-Loeb 2014: 111). Joel H. Wiener referred to the device as ‘one of the supreme milestones in press history’, claiming that it ‘broke down existing temporal barriers to news acquisition and transmission, nurtured wire agencies into existence, and accelerated stylistic and typographical changes in reporting’ (Wiener 2011: 65). Although he concedes that these changes were not immediate, he concludes that ‘no other breakthrough in technology has affected the press as profoundly, prior to the Internet revolution of our own age’ (ibid.: 66).

For studies of the British periodical press, there is something very enticing about the confluence of the dawning of the Victorian age and the introduction of telegraphy in 1837 – a convenient turning point for journalistic method and style. Yet, another contemporaneous event, the beginning of regular transatlantic steamship conveyance in 1838, receives far less notice despite its critical importance in expanding access to overseas content (Cranfield 1978: 165). The evolution of the international post (Robinson 1964: 189) and the implementation of fast, global mail steamers (Shulman 2015: 218–19; Wiener 2011: 64) are rarely discussed in studies of the British press beyond noting editorial complaints that foreign newspapers were often delayed by an incompetent or uncooperative postal service (Williams 1959: 48).