THE TELEGRAPHIC FLEET.
A Danish vessel—the Mariane—was to return to Denmark on the 4th of September, and at that date Kane and his party embarked on board of her, the captain engaging to drop them at the Shetland Islands. On the 11th they arrived at Godhavn, and there, at the very moment of their final departure, Captain Hartstene's relief-squadron was sighted in the offing. With the rescue of the adventurers closes our record of Arctic peril and discovery.
Dr. Kane fell a victim to his zeal in the arduous paths of science. He died, on the 16th of February, 1857, at Havana, where he was seeking to recuperate his debilitated system beneath a tropical sun. His loss was sincerely lamented by the whole country. No commander was ever better fitted by nature for the task confided to him; and no historian ever chronicled the results of his own labors in language more enthralling or in a style more commanding and picturesque.[A]
In the summer of 1857, an attempt to unite the two hemispheres by means of a submerged electric cable was made under the auspices of the New York, Newfoundland, and London Telegraph Company, assisted by vessels furnished by the Governments of Great Britain and the United States. Of this undertaking—unsuccessful as it was, and fresh as it is in the minds of all—our account will properly be brief. The idea was first conceived in the year 1853, in America, and was earnestly pursued in defiance of all obstacles,—Cyrus H. Field, Esq., Vice-President of the Company, being one of its most zealous and indefatigable champions. Surveys and deep-sea explorations, made by Captain Berryman, U.S.N., in the Dolphin and Arctic, in 1853 and 1856, resulted in the discovery of a submarine ledge or prairie, at a depth varying from two to two and a half miles, extending from Cape Race, in Newfoundland, to Cape Clear, in Ireland. This tract received the name of the Telegraphic Plateau. Lieutenant Maury, of the National Observatory, inferred, from observations made in the Atlantic during a long series of years, that both sea and air would be in the most favorable condition for laying the wire between the 20th of July and the 10th of August. The telegraphic fleet consisted of the U.S. steam-frigate Niagara, Captain Hudson, to lay the first half of the cable from Valentia Bay, in Ireland, of H.B.M. steamer Agamemnon, to lay the second half of the cable, and of six other auxiliary steamers of both nations.
HAULING THE CABLE ASHORE.
The Niagara commenced shipping the cable from the factory at Birkenhead, near Liverpool, late in June, and completed the work in somewhat less than a month. The share of each of the two vessels was twelve hundred and fifty miles of wire,—the wire itself being an elaborate combination of fine copper strands and gutta-percha coatings. The whole fleet was assembled in Valentia Bay on the 4th of August. The Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland was already upon the ground, the guest of the Knight of Kerry. The next evening, the shore-end of the cable was hauled from the stern of the Niagara to shallow water by an attendant tug named the Willing Mind, and from thence taken ashore, in the midst of the cheers of the spectators, by a boat's crew of American sailors. The expedition set sail on Thursday, the 6th. It was understood that the first message was to be the following, from Queen Victoria to President Buchanan:—"Glory be to God on high, and on earth peace and good-will towards men."