"The bill was then read a third time and passed."
CHAPTER VIII.
THE EXPEDITION OF 1857.
Scarcely was the business with the American Government completed, before Mr. Field was recalled to England. Once more upon the waves, he forgot the long delay and the vexatious opposition which he left behind—the fogs of Newfoundland, and the denser fogs of Washington. He was bound for England, and there at least the work did not stand still. All winter long the wheels of the machinery had kept in motion. The cable was uncoiling its mighty folds to a length sufficient to span the Atlantic, and at last there was hope of victory.
Although the United States Government had seemed a little ungracious in its delay, it yet rendered, this year and the next, most important service. Already it had prepared the way, by the deep-sea soundings, which it was the first to take across the Atlantic. It now rendered additional and substantial aid in lending to this enterprise the two finest ships in the American navy—the Niagara and the Susquehanna. The former was built some dozen years before by George Steers—a name celebrated among our marine architects as the constructor of the famous yacht America, that "racehorse of the sea," which had crossed the Atlantic, and carried off the prize in the British Channel from the yachts of England—and was designed to be a model of naval architecture. She was the largest steam-frigate in the world, exceeding in tonnage the heaviest line-of-battle ship in the English navy, and yet so finely modelled that, propelled only by a screw, she could make ten or twelve miles an hour. Notwithstanding her bulk, she was intended to carry but twelve guns—being one of the first ships in our navy to substitute a few heavy Dahlgrens for half a dozen times as many fifty-six-pounders. This was the beginning of that revolution in naval warfare, which was carried to such extent in the Monitors and other ironclads introduced in our civil war. Each gun weighed fourteen tons—requiring a crew of twenty-five men to wield it—and threw a shell of one hundred and thirty pounds a distance of three miles. One or two broadsides from such a deck would sink an old-fashioned seventy-four, or even a ninety or hundred-gun ship.
But as the Niagara was now to go on an errand of peace, this formidable armament was not taken on board. She was built with what is known as a flush deck, clear from stem to stern, and being without her guns, was left free for the more peaceful burden that she was to bear. When the orders were received from Washington, she was lying at the Brooklyn Navy-Yard, but began immediately to prepare for her expedition. Bulkheads were knocked down, above and below, to make room for the huge monster of the deep that was to be coiled within her sides. These preparations occupied four or five weeks. On the twenty-second of April, she made a trial trip down the bay, and two days after sailed for England, in command of Captain William L. Hudson, one of the oldest and best officers in our navy, who, to his past services to his country, was now to add another in the expeditions of this and the following year. He had with him as Chief Engineer Mr. William E. Everett, whose mechanical genius proved so important in constructing the paying-out machinery.
Besides the regular ship's crew, no one was received on board except Mr. Field and Professor Morse, who went as the electrician of the Newfoundland Company; and two officers of the Russian navy—Captain Schwartz and Lieutenant Kolobnin—who were permitted by our Government, as an act of national courtesy, to go out to witness the great experiment. The regulations of the navy did not admit correspondents of the press; but Professor Morse was permitted to take a secretary, and chose Mr. Mullaly, who reported for the New York Herald, and who had thus an opportunity to witness all the preparations on land and sea, and to furnish those minute and detailed accounts of the several expeditions, which contribute some important chapters in the history of this enterprise.
The Niagara arrived out on the fourteenth of May, and cast anchor off Gravesend, about twenty-five miles below London. As it was the first time—at least for many years—that an American ship of war had appeared in the Thames, this fact, with her fine proportions and the object for which she came, attracted a crowd of visitors. Every day, from morning to night, a fleet of boats was around her, and men and women thronged over her sides. Everybody was welcome. All were received with the utmost courtesy, and allowed access to all parts of the ship. Among these were many visitors of distinction. Here came Lady Franklin to thank the generous nation that had sent two expeditions to recover her husband lost amid Polar seas. She was, of course, the object of general attention and respectful sympathy.
While lying in the Thames, the Agamemnon, that was to take the other half of the cable, passed up the river. This was a historical ship, having borne the flag of the British admiral at the bombardment of Sebastopol, and distinguished herself by steaming up within a few hundred yards of the guns of the fortress. After passing through the fires of that terrible day, she was justly an object of pride to Britons, whose hearts swelled as they saw this oak-ribbed leviathan, that had come "out of the gates of death, out of the jaws of hell," now preparing to take part in achievements of peace, not less glorious than those of war. She was under command of Captain Noddal, of the Royal Navy.