Heart's Content is an incorporated town in Trinity Bay on the Bay de Verde Peninsula of Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada.
Geography
The natural harbour that makes up the town is located on the east side of Trinity Bay and it is built along the northeast side and the southeast base of this harbour. It opens out to Trinity Bay in a generally southwestern direction and protected from the harsh northern and eastern winds of the North Atlantic. Heart's Content is also at the crossroads of the main highway for Trinity Bay on the western side of the Bay de Verde peninsula and the highway cutting across the Bay de Verde peninsula between Victoria on the Conception Bay side and Heart's Content. The climate of the Atlantic Ocean and adjacent land areas is influenced by the temperatures of the surface waters and water currents as well as the winds blowing across the waters. Because of the oceans' great capacity for retaining heat, the climate of Heart's Content is moderate and free of extreme seasonal variations.
Precipitation falls on the area both as snow in the wintertime and moderate rainfall in summer.
The Gulf Stream and Labrador Current converge just off the coast of Newfoundland and provide for very dense fog that can linger in the area for days.
Transatlantic cable
Heart's Content was given its place in the history of international communications by Cyrus West Field who chose it as the terminus of his Transatlantic telegraph cable, leading to establishment of the Heart's Content Cable Station.
1855 – Heart's Content is chosen as the location for the first transatlantic submarine telegraph cable. 1858 (August 5) – The first ever transatlantic cable, connecting Valentia, Ireland, to a site at Bay Bulls Arm, directly across Trinity Bay from Heart's Content, is landed. Due to a malfunction, its operation was terminated on October 20, 1858. 1866 (July 27) – A new transatlantic cable is landed at Heart's Content by the SS Great Eastern. The bay was described as "a sheltered nook, where ships may ride at anchor safe from the storms of the ocean…on the beach is a small village of sixty houses, most of them the dwelling of these hardy men who vex the northern sea with their fisheries…" 1873 and 1874 – Two more cables are laid to Valentia. 1880 and 1894 – Two more cables were laid to Valentia, making Heart's Content one of the most important cable stations in the world. 1918 – The brick cable station is enlarged to serve the "Anglo-American Telegraph Company and its successor, Western Union, until its closure in 1965. 1968 – The brick cable building closed in 1965 is bought by the Provincial Government as an historic site and soon after begins a restoration project to make the almost 100-year-old building a communications museum. 1974 – (July 27) – 108 years after the landing of the transatlantic cable in the New World, the restored communications museum officially opens.