Orleans Cove is the cove in the town of
Orleans, Massachusetts
Orleans ( ) is a town in Barnstable County, Massachusetts situated along Cape Cod. The population was 6,307 at the 2020 census.
For geographic and demographic information on the census-designated place Orleans, please see the article Orleans (CD ...
Looking for a place to establish a settlement,
Samuel de Champlain came ashore at Orleans Cove in 1605. Champlain liked the area, but commented that "too many people already lived there". Champlain went back north, landing in
Nova Scotia
Nova Scotia ( ; ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is one of the three Maritime provinces and one of the four Atlantic provinces. Nova Scotia is Latin for "New Scotland".
Most of the population are native Eng ...
at an inlet on the south shore of
Baie Francaise, which Champlain named
Port Royal. Some claim that this was the first permanent French settlement in Canada, although there is some evidence that
Breton fishermen had settled in the Newfoundland area by this time.
Orleans Cove was the landfall of various French
transatlantic telegraph cable
Transatlantic telegraph cables were undersea cables running under the Atlantic Ocean for telegraph communications. Telegraphy is now an obsolete form of communication, and the cables have long since been decommissioned, but telephone and data a ...
s. The French Cable Station Museum is just inland from the cove. The French Cable Station Museum houses some of the original equipment used to lay the French transatlantic telegraph cables. The first French cable was laid in 1869 from
Le Minou near
Brest
Brest may refer to:
Places
*Brest, Belarus
**Brest Region
**Brest Airport
**Brest Fortress
* Brest, Kyustendil Province, Bulgaria
* Břest, Czech Republic
*Brest, France
** Arrondissement of Brest
**Brest Bretagne Airport
** Château de Brest
*Br ...
to
St. Pierre and then on to
Duxbury
Duxbury (alternative older spelling: "Duxborough") is a historic seaside town in Plymouth County, Massachusetts, United States. A suburb located on the South Shore approximately to the southeast of Boston, the population was 16,090 at the 20 ...
. In 1891, the French cables reaching the US were grouped together at the French Cable Station at Orleans Cove. These cables allowed for communication between North America and France.
References
Description of the French transatlantic telegraph cable
{{Coastal waterbodies of Massachusetts
Coves of the United States
Bodies of water of Barnstable County, Massachusetts
Bays of Massachusetts