Telegraph wires first began to spread their overhead network in London in 1859; the District Telegraph Company was started in 1860. Ten years later Punch celebrates the reduction of the fee for a twenty-word telegram to one shilling. Of the use of telegraphy in war he expressed considerable scepticism, on the ground that it would lead to endless contradictory rumours.
AWFUL SUMMUT
That Tummas met as he was a-comin' whoam—"Ta looked like a man a ridin' 'pon nawthin'!"
The Atlantic Cable
The most notable advance in telegraphy, however, was that of the long-distance cables. The year 1858 abounds in references to the second and third attempts to span the Atlantic. Frequent failures delayed the achievement of the enterprise for several years. In 1865 Punch published a series of reports purporting to come from the Great Eastern, then engaged in laying the cable, but it was not until the summer of 1866 that he was able to record the completion of the task:—
A Parliamentary week never ended with a more gratifying incident. A Minister, Mr. Hunt, stated that the Atlantic Telegraph had been laid to America, an ex-Minister, Mr. Childers, confirmed the fact, and an Honourable Member held in his hand a signal that had just arrived. Mr. Punch instantly sent Mr. Johnson a peremptory signal to liquor severely.
Undoubtedly the record of the marvels of applied science kept by Punch, and the forecasts of further extension in which he indulged, come home to us more closely in connexion with inventions for use in warfare. The unrealized projects of Captain Warner have been described in the previous volume. A liquid-fire bomb or incendiary shell, and an incendiary rifle-bullet attracted attention early in 1859. But the lessons of the American War of 1861-1865 gave Punch occasion to think sometimes seriously, and even with flashes of remarkable insight, on the possibilities of future warfare. His old distrust of armoured ships as "ferreous freaks" was not entirely dispelled by the triumph of the monitor; he gives us a picture of a new iron-clad mistaken for a Noah's Ark, and speaks of the new types as flat-irons. He admits that the action between the Merrimac and the Monitor conclusively proves that one iron-clad ship is a match for several wooden ships carrying more and heavier guns; but if there are to be no ships of war but iron ships, and iron ships are mutually shot-proof, he is impelled to the further conclusion that naval war in the future may end in an inconclusive stalemate:—
Ships being rendered practically invulnerable, any two vessels of war belonging to hostile nations will, hereafter, meeting on the high seas, each find itself unable to injure the other and therefore be obliged to part in peace, the result of their collision having been as nearly as possible the opposite to that of the conflict between the Kilkenny Cats.
From such a prospect Punch professes to derive hope; but there is more sagacity in the "Farewell to the Fleet" which followed three weeks later, a valediction which in its last stanza crudely anticipates the pre-and post-war warnings of Admiral Sir Percy Scott:—