The Story of the Atlantic Telegraph

by Henry M. Field

To complete this organization and equipment caused such delays as excited the impatience of all on board. But at length, when midsummer had fully come—at noon of Saturday, July fifteenth—the song of the sailors sounded the chant du départ. The Great Eastern was then lying at the Nore, and she seemed to cling to the English soil which she had griped with a huge Trotman weighing seven tons, held fast by a chain whereof every link weighed seventy pounds! To wrench this ponderous anchor from its bed required the united strength of near two hundred men. At last the bottom lets go its hold, the anchor swings to the bow, the gun is fired, and the voyage is begun. A fleet of yachts and boats raise their cheers as the mighty hull begins to move. But mark how carefully she feels her way, following the lead of yonder little steamer, the Porcupine, the same faithful guide that seven years before led the Niagara up Trinity Bay one night when the faint light of stars twinkled on all the surrounding hills. Slowly they near the sea. Now the cliffs of Dover are in sight, and bidding her escort adieu, the Great Eastern glides along by the beautiful Isle of Wight, and then quickening her speed, with a royal sweep, she moves down the Channel. Off Falmouth she picked up the Caroline, a small steamer, which had left several days before with the shore end on board. She was laboring heavily with her burden, and made little headway in the rough waves. But the Great Eastern took her in tow, and she followed like a ship's boat in the wake of the monarch of the seas.

Thus they passed round to the coast of Ireland, to that Valentia Bay where, eight years before, the Earl of Carlisle gave his benediction on the departure of the Niagara and the Agamemnon, and where, a year later, the gallant English ship brought her end of the cable safely to the shore.

The point of landing had been changed from Valentia harbor five or six miles to Foilhommerum Bay, a wild spot where huge cliffs hang over the waves that here come rolling in from the Atlantic. On the top, an old tower of the time of Cromwell tells of the bloody days of England's great civil war. It is now but a mossy ruin. Here the peasants who flocked in from the country pitched their booths on the green sward, and looked down from the dizzy heights on the boats dancing in the bay below. At the foot of the cliff, a soft, sandy beach forms a bed for the cable, and here, as it issues from the sea, it is led up a channel which had been cut for it in the rocks.

As the shore end was very massive and unwieldy, it could not be laid except in good weather; and as the sea was now rough, the Great Eastern withdrew to Bantry Bay, to be out of the way of the storms which sometimes break with fury on this rock-bound coast.

On Saturday this preliminary work was completed, the heavy shore end was carried from the deck of the Caroline across a bridge of boats to the beach, and hauled up the cliffs amid the shouts of the people. When once it was made fast to the rocks, the little steamer began to move, and the huge coil slowly unwound, and like a giant awakened, stretched out its long iron arms. By half-past ten o'clock at night the hold was empty, the whole twenty-seven miles having been safely laid, and the end buoyed in seventy-five fathoms water. A despatch was at once sent across the country to Bantry Bay to the Great Eastern to come around with all speed, and early the next morning her smoke was seen in the offing. Passing the harbor of Valentia, she proceeded to join the Caroline, which she reached about noon, and at once commenced splicing the massive shore end to her own deep-sea line. This was a work of several hours, so that it was toward evening before all was completed.

Thus, so many had been the delays of the past week, that it had come on to Sunday before the Great Eastern was ready to begin her voyage. This—which some might count a desecration of the holy day—the sailors rather accepted as a good omen. Had the shore end been laid forty-eight hours sooner, the voyage might have begun on Friday, which sailors, who are proverbially superstitious, would have thought an unlucky beginning. But Sunday, in their esteem, is a good day. They like, when a ship is moving out of sight of land, that the last sound from the shore should be the blessed Sabbath bells. If that sacred chime were not heard to-day, at least a Sabbath peace rested on sea and sky. It was a calm summer's evening. The sun was just sinking in the waves, as the Great Eastern, with the two ships of war which waited on either hand, to attend her royal progress, turned their faces to the West, and caught the sudden glory. Says Russell: "As the sun set, a broad stream of golden light was thrown across the smooth billows toward their bows, as if to indicate and illumine the path marked out by the hand of Heaven." What a sacred omen! Had it been the fleet of Columbus sailing westward, every ship's company would have fallen upon their knees on those decks, and burst forth in an Ave Maria to the gentle Mistress of the Seas. But in that manly crew there was many an eye that took in the full beauty of the scene, and many a reverent heart that invoked a benediction.

In other respects the day was well chosen. It was the twenty-third of July. From the beginning, Captain Anderson had wished to sail on the twenty-third of June, or the twenty-second of July, so as to have the full moon on the American coast. He desired also to take advantage of the westerly winds which prevail at that season, for in going against the wind the Great Eastern was steady as a rock. Every expectation was realized. To the big ship the ocean was as an inland lake. The paying-out machinery—the product of so much study and skill—worked beautifully, and as the ship increased her speed, the cable glided into the water with such ease that it seemed but a holiday affair to carry it across to yonder continent. Such were the reflections of all that evening as the long summer twilight lingered on the sea. At midnight they went to sleep, to dream of an easy triumph.

Yet be not too confident. But a few hours had passed before the booming of a gun awoke all on board with the heavy tidings of disaster. The morning breaks early in those high latitudes, and by four o'clock all were on deck, with anxious looks inquiring for the cause of alarm. The ship was lying still, as if her voyage had already come to an end, and electricians, with troubled countenances, were passing in and out of the testing-room, which, as it was always kept darkened, looked like a sick-chamber where some royal patient lay trembling between life and death.

The method used by the electricians to discover a fault is one of such delicacy and beauty as shows the marvellous perfection of the instruments which science employs to learn the secrets of nature. The galvanometer is an invention of Professor Thomson, by which "a ray of light reflected from a tiny mirror suspended to a magnet travels along a scale, and indicates the resistance to the passage of the current through the cable by the deflection of the magnet, which is marked by the course of this speck of light. If the light of the mirror travels beyond the index, or out of bounds, an escape of the current is taking place, and what is technically called a fault has occurred." Such was the discovery on Monday morning. At a quarter past three o'clock the electrician on duty saw the light suddenly glide to the end of the scale and vanish.

Fortunately it was not a fatal injury. It did not prevent signalling through the cable, and a message was at once sent back to the shore, giving notice of the check that had been received. But the electric current did not flow freely. There was a leak at some point of the line which it would not be prudent to pass over. They were now seventy-three miles from shore, having run out eighty-four miles of cable. The tests of the electricians indicated the fault to be ten or a dozen miles from the stern of the ship. The only safe course was to go back and get this on board, and cut out the defective portion. It was a most ungrateful operation thus to be undoing their own work, but there was no help for it.