Text in English within plate. The print dates from the year that the Revd Lord George Murray designed the original arrangement, although telegraph or semaphore signals were also developed in France as well as England in the last years of the 18th century. Murray’s system was known as the shutter telegraph and comprised a vertical board with six large holes in its face each of which could be opened, to display the sky or a light, or closed (see MDL0020). Depending on the lie of the land distances between stations varied and were sometimes as much as eight miles apart. Four lines were set up from the Admiralty to Portsmouth, Plymouth, Deal and Yarmouth. According to the inscription beneath the title this print is based on a drawing ‘By an officer on Duty’.