CHAPTER XXVI.
THE REIGN OF VICTORIA (continued).
The Cholera—Laying of the Atlantic Cable—Previous Failures—The Great Eastern's first Attempt—Her second Voyage—The Undertaking accomplished—Recovery of the broken Cable—Reform Demonstrations—The Guildhall Meeting—Meetings at Manchester, Leeds, and Elsewhere—Mr. Bright and the Queen—The Government prepares a Bill—"Black Friday"—The Overend and Gurney Failure—Limited Liability—Royal Marriages—Prize-Money—The Loss of the London—A bad Harvest—The Fenian Trials—Lord Wodehouse's Letter—Suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act—Rapid Legislation—Wholesale Arrests—The Army purged—Renewal of the Act—Lord Kimberley's Speech—Sweeny and Stephens—The Niagara Raid—General Spear's Exploit—A peaceful Winter—Whewell and Keble.
THE visitation of the cholera in England in 1866 was light in comparison with what it was in some foreign cities, and with what it had been in former years in London. The deaths did not materially affect the returns of mortality for the year; they fell short of eight thousand. In Austria it was computed that at least 100,000 persons were carried off by cholera in this year, and there was hardly a week in which the deaths in London were not exceeded by those in some Continental cities with scarcely a tenth of its population. This result was certainly owing in great part to the sanitary precautions and improvements carried out by the Cholera Committee. The disease kept extending itself as the summer advanced, until it reached its culminating point in the fortnight between the 21st of July and the 4th of August; in the week ending on the last-named day 1,053 deaths from cholera were reported in London. Then all at once it began to subside, and before the month of August had passed, the Lord Mayor was enabled to suggest a large appropriation of the funds which had been liberally subscribed by charitable persons (the Queen sent £500) for the formation and support of cholera hospitals, to the assistance of those who had been left orphans by the epidemic.
The enterprise of laying an insulated electric cable at the bottom of the Atlantic in order to secure instantaneous telegraphic communication between Europe and America—first attempted in 1857, crowned with a fleeting and illusory success in 1858, and partially accomplished in 1865—was in the summer of this year completely realised, not only by the successful laying of the cable of 1866, but by the recovery from the bottom of the sea of the cable of 1865, which was then pieced on to a new wire rope, and carried safely onward to the shore of Newfoundland. A brief survey of the previous unsuccessful attempts will not be uninstructive. In the first, that of 1857, the cable was of a clumsy and ponderous description, if compared with the lighter and relatively stronger ropes afterwards adopted. Two men-of-war, the Agamemnon and the Niagara, composed the expedition; the Niagara paying out the cable. When 380 miles had been paid out, the cable broke and the ships returned to port. In 1858 the same ships were employed and a new plan was tried. The ships proceeded to the middle of the Atlantic, each with 1,500 miles of cable on board; here they effected a splice of the two ends of their respective cargoes and proceeded in different directions, the Agamemnon to the eastward, the Niagara to the westward, paying out as they went. Even to the uninitiated this plan would appear to expose the cable to a needless amount of additional strain, and therefore to increase the risk of fracture. Twice the cable broke after less than fifty miles had been paid out; a third time the cable broke, when about 140 miles had been submerged; a third time the vessels returned to the watery rendezvous, but they now failed to meet, and each returned separately to Queenstown. A fourth attempt, at the end of July, was more successful; though the signalling was repeatedly interrupted during the paying-out process, the cable did not actually break and the object was supposed to have been accomplished. The Niagara brought her end to Trinity Bay on the 5th of August, and on the same day the Agamemnon brought hers to Valentia. Messages of congratulation were interchanged between the Queen and the President of the United States (Mr. Buchanan), and for a short time there was exultation. But a suspiciously great expenditure of electricity was required on one side of the ocean in order to affect the instrument on the other. The indications became feebler and feebler, and before any commercial use had been made of the cable, they ceased entirely.
Much disappointment was felt in both continents and for some years no fresh attempt was made. In 1864 a new company was formed, under the auspices of which a new cable was manufactured on a simpler and better plan, and in July, 1865, the Great Eastern, accompanied by the Sphinx and the Terrible, men-of-war, commenced to lay it from Valentia. One thousand two hundred miles of cable had been paid out, and a distance of only 600 miles remained to be traversed, when, while engaged in hauling in upon the cable, in order to discover and remove a "fault," the adventurers had the mortification of seeing it suddenly part. All three ships then began to fish for the cable with the greatest diligence; but although repeatedly grappled, it always snapped before it could be raised to the surface and, after losing an inconceivable amount of rope, the expedition returned to England.
From the diary kept by the Secretary of the Anglo-American Telegraph Construction Company on board the Great Eastern, we extract a few interesting particulars with reference to her successful voyage in 1866. She took her departure from Berehaven, Bantry Bay, on the 12th of July, having the cable stowed away in large coils in two immense tanks, one forward, the other aft. The ship was commanded by Captain Anderson; the "cable crew" and everything connected with the laying of the cable were under the superintendence of Mr. Canning. The plan was, that the immense vessel, propelled both by paddles and screw, and, therefore, more manageable than a vessel dependent on one source of motion, should steam slowly ahead, paying out the cable as she went over the stern, through machinery invented for the purpose in the preceding year by Messrs. Canning and Clifford, which had been found to answer admirably. The shore end of the cable, which had been laid at Foilhummerum Bay, in Valentia Island, some days previously, was brought on board the Great Eastern on the 13th, and made fast to the cable; as soon as the splice was effected, the paying-out process immediately commenced. For some days the weather was everything that could be wished. Three men-of-war took part in the expedition, ready to give immediate aid, if necessary—the Terrible, the Albany, and the Medway. The insulation of the cable was perfect; communication between the ship and Valentia was uninterruptedly maintained, and the last news from Europe, received through the cable, was printed each day on board, under the title of The Great Eastern Telegraph. The chief check to the prosperous progress of the undertaking occurred on the 18th of July, and it was a very alarming one. A "foul flake," or tangle, took place in the after-tank, containing, originally, more than 800 miles of cable, while the paying-out was tranquilly going on, a short time after midnight, and was not cleared for an hour and a half. From this time no incident of much moment marked the progress of the expedition. As the Great Eastern neared Newfoundland, the weather became foggy, and the Albany was sent on to Heart's Content, a harbour in Trinity Bay, Newfoundland, to clear the north-east side of the harbour of shipping, and place a boat with a red flag for Captain Anderson to steer to for anchorage. By dint of good management—the men-of-war forming a line of communication between the shore and the Great Eastern, and that one which was nearest to her guiding her through the fog by the repeated firing of guns—she was piloted into Trinity Bay without accident on the morning of the 27th of July. The shore end was quickly laid and the electric union of Europe and America was at last complete. On the 28th Lord Carnarvon telegraphed to Lord Monck at Ottawa felicitations on the happy result of an enterprise which could not fail to draw closer the ties of amity and fellowship uniting Canada to England; and on the 30th congratulatory messages were exchanged between the Queen and President Johnson.
But this was not all. The task of fishing for the broken end of the cable of 1865, which the loss of all her spare rope had, as we have seen, compelled the Great Eastern to abandon in the previous September, was now resumed with all the eager hope and confidence engendered by success. The cable had been lost at the depth of about 2,000 fathoms, and experience had shown that to pick it up at one lift from that enormous depth was impracticable, the mere weight of the cable, in its resistance to the force employed by the picking up machinery, being sufficient to snap it. It was arranged, therefore, that the Great Eastern herself, and the attendant men-of-war, tracing back the cable for the space of several miles from the point of fracture, should grapple for it, and when found raise it, not to the surface, but to various heights from the bottom, so that several miles of cable should be raised to an altitude intermediate between the bottom and the surface, and be secured there by buoys attached to the grappling ropes; and thus the final lift, being only from this intermediate altitude, might present reasonable chances of success. But this plan of operations, simple though it be in the telling, involved a great amount of anxious and exhausting labour, and mechanical and practical difficulties of various kinds. Eventually it was recovered on September 1st and was found to be perfectly sound.