The Atlantic Telegraph Company was formed; and 2,500 miles of cable were manufactured and stowed on board the English naval vessel Agamemnon and the United States ship Niagara. It was on the evening of August 7th, 1857, that the squadron sailed; and according to arrangement the Niagara at once began to pay out the cable very slowly; but before five miles had been accomplished the heavy shore end of the cable got entangled with the machinery through the carelessness of one of the men in charge, and parted. The Niagara put back, and the cable was “under run” the whole distance. At last the end was raised from the water and “spliced” to the gigantic coil, and as it dropped safely to its resting-place among the “salt sea ooze” the noble ship once more went on her way. Saturday, we are told, was a day of beautiful weather. The squadron made good progress at a rate of from four to five miles an hour, and the cable was paid out at a speed somewhat exceeding that of the ship, to allow for any irregularities of surface on the bottom of the sea. Meantime a constant communication was kept up with the land. Every moment the electric fluid flashed between ship and shore. Not only did the electricians wire back to Valentia the progress they were making, but the officers on board sent messages to their friends in America to go out by the steamer from Liverpool. The very heavens seemed to regard the enterprise with favour. All went merrily as a marriage bell. Without a kink the coil came up from the vessel’s hold, and unwinding easily, passed over the stern into the sea. Once or twice, however, a momentary alarm was caused by the cable being thrown [pg 102]off the wheels, an accident due to the insufficient width and depth of the sheaves and to the fact that they were filled with tar, which hardened in the air. This defect was remedied in later expeditions. Still it worked well, and as long as the terrible brakes withheld their iron grasp might work through to the end. On the following day, Sunday, the course of affairs was not less smooth; and on Monday the expedition was upwards of 200 miles from land. The shallow water of the coast had been safely traversed. The ships had passed over the submarine declivity which has been already described, and had reached the deeper waters of the Atlantic, where the cable sank to a depth of not less than 2,000 fathoms. Still the iron cord buried itself in the profound silence, and every instant the flash of light in the telegraph room recorded the continuous passage of the mysterious electric current. About four o’clock on Tuesday morning, however, a sudden interruption occurred. It seems from the published narrative that the cable was running cut fully at the rate of six miles an hour, while the ship was making only four. To check this waste, the engineer applied the brakes very firmly, with the effect of stopping the machine. Hence a heavy strain told on the submerged portion of the cable. The stern of the ship was down in the trough of the sea, and as it rose upward on the swell the pressure became too great, and the cable parted. Instantly a cry of grief and dismay ran through the ship. She was checked in her onward career, and in five minutes all gathered on deck with feelings which can be better imagined than described. One who was present wrote:—“The unbidden tear started to many a manly eye. The interest taken in the enterprise by all—every one, officers and men—exceeded anything I ever saw, and there is no wonder that there should have been so much emotion at our failure.” Captain Hudson says:—“It made all hands of us through the day like a household or family which had lost their dearest friend, for officers and men had been deeply interested in the success of the enterprise.” The cable broke in 2,000 fathoms water, when about 330 nautical miles were laid, at a distance of 280 miles from Valentia. This was the first of a series of disappointments, ending, however, in eventual triumph.
The same vessels sailed again in June of the next year, and as arranged before starting, reached a point of junction in mid-stream, where the ends of the two cables were spliced, and the ships parted, the Agamemnon steering for Valentia, and the Niagara for Trinity Bay, Newfoundland. Both vessels arrived at their ports of destination on August 5th, and the fact of the completion of the enterprise was for the first time “cabled” under the wide Atlantic two days later, to the great rejoicing, it may fairly be said, of two worlds. Congratulatory messages were flashed from either end, and success seemed secured. Alas! less than a month later all communication ceased; the electric current would not pass through the great wire-rope; there was a leakage somewhere. But it had been shown conclusively that messages could be transmitted under the given conditions. This was something.
Passing over all the financial arrangements connected with a new attempt, which was not made till 1865, we find Brunel’s prediction fulfilled. The largest ship in the world was chartered to lay another cable.
EXTERIOR AND SECTION OF THE 1865 ATLANTIC CABLE.
The work of stowing away the cable on board the Great Eastern, where it was coiled up [pg 103]in three immense tanks—one aft, one amidships, and one forward—began in January and was not completed until June. It will give the reader an idea of the enormous size and capacity of the Great Eastern when he is told that though the cable measured 2,700 miles, a visitor to the mammoth ship was at first unaware of its being on board! Here is the account given by a writer who went to see the ship and its novel cargo. Its details are interesting. “It is time,” he says, after a general survey of the wonders of the huge vessel—“it is time we should look after what we have mainly come to see—the telegraph cable. To our intense astonishment we beheld it—nowhere, although informed that there are nearly 2,000 miles of it already on board, and that the remaining piece, which is long enough to stretch from Land’s End to John o’ Groat’s, is in course of shipment. We walk up and down on the deck of the Great Eastern without seeing this chain which is to bind together the Old World and the New, and it is only on having the place pointed out to us that we find out where the cable lies.” The writer then describes the process of taking it on board:—“On the side opposite to where we landed, deep below the deck of our giant, is moored a vessel surmounted by a timber structure resembling a house, and from this vessel the wonderful telegraph cable is drawn silently into the immense womb of the Great Eastern. The work is done so quietly and noiselessly, by means of a small steam-engine, that we scarcely notice it. Indeed, were it not pointed out to us, we would never think that that little iron cord, about an inch in diameter, which is sliding over a few rollers and through a wooden table, is a thing of world-wide fame—a thing which may influence the life of whole nations, nay, which may affect the march of civilisation. Following the direction in which the iron rope goes, we now come to the most marvellous sight.... We find ourselves in a little wooden cabin, and look down over a railing at the side into an immense cavern below. This cavern is one of the three ‘tanks’ in which the two-thousand-mile cable is finding a temporary home. The passive agent of electricity comes creeping in here in a beautiful silent manner, and is deposited in coils, layer above layer. It is almost dark at the immense depth below, and we can only dimly discern the human figures through whose hands the coil passes to its bed. Suddenly, however, the men begin singing. They intone a low, plaintive song of the sea, something like Kingsley’s
“Three fishers went sailing away to the west,
Away to the west, as the sun went down,”
the sounds of which rise up from the dark deep cavern with startling effect, and produce an indescribable impression. We move on; but the song of the sailors who are taking charge of the Atlantic telegraph cable is haunting us like a dream. In vain that our guide conducts us all over the big ship, through miles of galleries, passages, staircases, and promenades; through gorgeous saloons full of mirrors, marbles, paintings, and upholstery, made ‘regardless of expense’; and through buildings crowded with glittering steam apparatus of gigantic dimensions, where the latent power of coal and water creates the force which propels this monster vessel across the seas. In vain our attention is directed to all these sights; we do not admire them; our imagination is used up. The echo of the sailors’ song in the womb of the Great Eastern will not be banished from our mind. It raises visions of the future of the mystic iron coil under our feet: how it will roll forth again from its narrow berth; how it will sink to the bottom of the Atlantic or hang from mountain to mountain far below [pg 104]the stormy waves; and how two great nations, the offspring of one race and the pioneers of civilisation, will speak through this wonderful coil, annihilating distance and time. Who can help dreaming here on the spot where we stand? For it is truly a marvellous romance of civilisation, this Great Eastern and this Atlantic telegraph cable. Even should our age produce nothing else, it alone would be the triumph of our age.”
