“No such word as fail,”
for the worst disappointment only stirred him to fresh exertion.
“’Tis not in mortals to command success;
But we’ll do more, Sempronius—we’ll deserve it.”
Field was born in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, a rural village nook which lies calmly and peacefully cradled among the green Berkshire hills, a spot which would delight the eyes of a true artist. He was the son of a country pastor, who, in spite of a paltry stipend of a hundred and fifty pounds a year, and thanks to the scholastic advantages offered to every one in the United States, gave nine children a superior education. Several of these children distinguished themselves in after life, but none more than the subject of this sketch.
While to this energetic man is due the actual success, it is to Professor Morse, who had said that “telegraphic communication might with certainty be established across the Atlantic Ocean,” and to an excellent Roman Catholic bishop, that the idea is to be fairly credited. Bishop Mullock, of Newfoundland, while lying becalmed in his yacht off Cape North, the extreme point of the province of Cape Breton, bethought himself how his poor neglected island might reap some advantage from being taken into the track of communication between Europe and America, for he saw that Nature had provided an easy approach to the mainland for a cable. Fired with the idea, he wrote to one of the St. John’s papers, and his letter is to-day a model of lucid explanation. About the same time Mr. Frederick N. Gisborne, a practical telegraph operator, promulgated the idea of connecting St. John’s with the mainland, and one evening interested Mr. Cyrus Field, then just retired from business on a competency, in his scheme. “After he left,” writes his brother, “Mr. Field took the globe which was standing in the library, and began to turn it over. It was while thus studying the globe that the idea first occurred to him that the telegraph might be carried further still, and be made to span the Atlantic Ocean.” Maury, the distinguished marine scientist, and Professor Morse, had also come to the same conclusion, and at about the same time as had others in England. The history of the financial difficulties and ultimate triumphs connected with the inauguration of the first cable would not interest the reader; suffice it to say that half-a-dozen New York millionaires subscribed the first capital—a million and a half dollars. The cable across the Gulf of St. Lawrence was successfully laid in 1856, after one previous failure.
And now Field began to clear the way by consulting the highest scientific authorities on both sides of the Atlantic. Was it possible to carry a cable across the ocean? If laid, would it be able to convey messages? The first query related to mechanical difficulties only, such as the depth of the ocean, the nature of the ocean bed, the influence of currents and winds. The second referred to pure science and the conditions under which the electric fluid acts—Would the lightning flash from shore to shore across an intervening waste of sea? The answer to the first question was supplied by Maury, who pointed out that between Ireland and Newfoundland the bottom of the sea formed a plateau, or elevated table-land, which, as he said, seemed to have been placed there especially for the purpose of supporting the wires of an electric telegraph, and protecting them from injury. Its slope, he said, was quite regular, gradually increasing from the shores of Newfoundland to the depth of from 1,500 to 2,000 fathoms as you approach the Irish coast. It was neither too deep nor too shallow: deep enough to protect the cable from danger by ships’ anchors, icebergs, and currents; shallow enough to secure that the wires should be readily lodged upon the bottom. From Professor Morse an equally satisfactory answer was obtained. He declared his faith in the undertaking as a practicable one: that it might, could, and would be achieved.
The Company undertook to make a series of careful soundings to ascertain the exact nature of the ocean bottom over which the cable connecting Newfoundland with Ireland would have to be laid. Mr. Field applied for this purpose to the American Government, who immediately despatched the Arctic, under Lieutenant Berryman, on this useful and most necessary service. She sailed from New York on the 18th of July, 1856; and on the following day Mr. Field left in the steamship Baltic for England, to organise the Atlantic Telegraph Company. The Arctic proceeded to St. John’s, and thence went [pg 100]on her way across the deep, in three weeks reaching the coast of Ireland, and clearly demonstrating, as the result of her survey, the existence of a great plateau under the ocean, extending all the way from the New World to the Old. To make assurance doubly sure, Mr. Field solicited the British Admiralty “to make what further soundings might be necessary between Ireland and Newfoundland, and to verify those made by Lieutenant Berryman.” In response to this appeal the Admiralty sent out the Cyclops, under Lieutenant Dayman, a very capable officer, who executed his task with great zeal and success. He showed that the depth of the water on the so-called telegraphic plateau—the elevated table-land which Providence had raised between the two continents—nowhere exceeded 2,500 fathoms, or 15,000 feet. Such a depth is almost trivial compared with the enormous depths in other parts of the Atlantic, where you might hide from all human eyes the loftiest snow-clad peak of the Himalayas, yet no inconsiderable depth if you reflect that the peak of Teneriffe, were it here “cast into the sea,” would sink out of sight, island, mountain, and all; and even the coloured crest of Mont Blanc would rise but a few hundred feet above the waves. The single exception to this uniform depth occurs about 200 miles off the Irish coast, where within an area of about a dozen miles the depth sinks from 550 to 1,750 fathoms. In 14° 48′ W., says Dayman, we have 550 fathoms rock, and in 150° 6′ W. we have 1,750 fathoms ooze. In little more than ten miles of distance a change of depth takes place amounting to fully 7,200 feet. It was supposed that this tremendous declivity would be the chief point of danger in laying down the cable; and to remove, if possible, the anxiety which existed, Lieutenant Dayman made a further survey. The result showed that the dip was not a sudden one; the precipitous bank or submarine cliff turned out to be a gradual slope of nearly sixty miles. Over this long slope, said a writer in the Times, the difference between its greatest height and greatest depth is only 8,760 feet, so that the average incline is, in round numbers, about 145 feet per mile. A good gradient on a railway is now generally considered to be 1 in 100 feet, or about 53 feet in a mile; so that the incline on this supposed bank is only about three times that of an ordinary railway. It was found upon these surveys that the ocean bed consisted of a soft ooze, as soft as the moss which clings to old damp stone on the river’s brink. And of what does this ooze consist? The microscope revealed the astonishing fact that it is made up of myriads of shells, too minute to be discovered by the naked eye, yet each perfect in itself, unbroken and uninjured. These organisms live near the surface of the water, but in death sink down to the bottom, and there find a calm and peaceful resting-place. Well has it been said that a mighty work of life and death has for ages been going on in the tranquil bosom of ocean. Myriads upon myriads, ever since the morning of creation, have been falling—falling like snow-flakes, till their remains cover with a thick stratum of beautiful organisms the ocean bed. “The bearing of this discovery,” says Dr. Field, “on the problem of a submarine telegraph was obvious. For it, too, was to lie on the ocean bed, beside and among those relics that had so long been drifting down upon the watery plain. And if these tiny shells slept there unharmed, surely an iron cord might rest there in safety. There were no swift currents down there; no rushing waves agitated that sunless sea. There the waters moved not, and there might rest the great nerve that was to pass from [pg 101]continent to continent. And so far as injury from the surrounding elements was concerned, there it might remain, whispering the thoughts of successive generations of men, till the sea should give up its dead.” Everything showed that the project of an Atlantic cable was feasible. All that remained was to raise the capital necessary for its development. But this could be done only by the formation of a large and influential company, the enterprise having outgrown the resources of Mr. Field and his little band of New York merchants. While engaged in submitting his scheme to the consideration of the capitalists of London, Mr. Field found counsel and encouragement from many men distinguished in the world of science, and among his principal supporters had the good fortune to rank Glass and Elliot, now so well known as manufacturers of sea-cables, and the celebrated engineers whose names are associated with the scientific marvels of the age—Brett, Bidder, Robert Stephenson, and Brunel. The last-named was then building the colossal ship afterwards called the Great Eastern; and one day taking Mr. Field down to see her gigantic hull as it lay in the yard at Blackwall, he exclaimed—and, as results have proved, prophetically—“There is the ship to lay your Atlantic cable!”
SECTION OF THE FIRST ATLANTIC CABLE.