CYRUS W. FIELD.
One of the greatest enterprises of modern times, was the laying of the first Atlantic cable. Cyrus W. Field became impressed with the feasibility of this project. He induced capitalists to put their money into it; and then plunged into the work with all the force of his being. The faithfulness with which he performed his task gained for him the united praise of two continents.
By hard work he secured aid for his company from the British government; but in Congress he encountered such bitter opposition from a powerful lobby that his measure had a majority of only one in the senate.
The cable was loaded upon the Agamemnon, the flagship of the British fleet at Sebastopol, and upon the Niagara, a magnificent new frigate of the United States navy; but, when five miles of cable had been paid out, it caught in the machinery and parted. On the second trial, when two hundred miles at sea, the electric current was suddenly lost, and men paced the decks nervously and sadly, as if in the presence of death. Just as Mr. Field was about to give the order to cut the cable, the current returned as quickly and mysteriously as it had disappeared. The following night, when the ship was moving but four miles an hour and the cable running out at the rate of six miles, the brakes were applied too suddenly just as the steamer gave a heavy lurch, and the cable broke and sank to the bottom of the sea.
Directors were disheartened, the public skeptical, capitalists were shy, and, but for the faith of Mr. Field, who worked day and night, almost without food or sleep, the whole project would have been abandoned.
A third attempt also resulted in failure, but not discouraged by all these difficulties, Mr. Field went to work with a will, organized a new company, and made a new cable far superior to anything before used; and, on July 13, 1866, was begun the trial which ended with the following message sent to New York:
"HEART'S CONTENT, July 27.
"We arrived here at nine o'clock this morning. All well. Thank God! the cable is laid and is in perfect working order. CYRUS W. FIELD."
Such, in brief, is the story of the faithful performance of a seemingly impossible task. It was a long, hard struggle, covering nearly thirteen years of anxious watching and ceaseless toil. But the name and fame of Cyrus W. Field will long be cherished and remembered by a grateful people.
[Footnote: See Appleton's "Cyclopedia of American Biography," Vol. II., pp. 448, 449, and Johnson's "Universal Cyclopedia," Vol. III., p. 351.]