The Story of the Atlantic Telegraph

by Henry M. Field

It came without a moment's warning. So unexpected was such a catastrophe, that the gentlemen had gone down to lunch, as it was a little past the hour of noon. But Mr. Canning and Mr. Field stood watching the cable as it was straining upward from the sea, and saw the snapping of that cord, which broke so many hopes. The impression may be better imagined than described. Says a writer on board: "Suddenly Mr. Canning appeared in the saloon, and in a manner which caused every one to start in his seat, said, 'It is all over! It is gone!' then hastened onward to his cabin. Ere the thrill of surprise and pain occasioned by these words had passed away, Mr. Field came from the companion into the saloon, and said, with composure admirable under the circumstances, though his lip quivered and his cheek was blanched, 'The cable has parted and has gone overboard.' All were on deck in a moment, and there, indeed, a glance revealed the truth."

At last it had come—the calamity which all had feared, yet that seemed so far away only a few hours before. Yet there it was—the ragged end on board, torn and bleeding, the other lying far down in its ocean grave.

In America, of course, nothing could be known of the fate of the expedition till its arrival on our shores. But in England its progress was reported from day to day, and as the success up to this point had raised the hopes of all to the highest pitch, the sudden loss of communication with the ship was a heavy blow to public expectation, and gave rise to all sorts of conjectures. At first a favorite theory was, that communication had been interrupted by a magnetic storm. These are among the most mysterious phenomena of nature—so subtle and fleeting as to be almost beyond the reach of science. No visible sign do they give of their presence. No clouds darken the heavens; no thunder peals along the sky. Yet strange influences trouble the air. At this very hour, Professor Airy, the Astronomer Royal at the Observatory at Greenwich, reported a magnetic storm of unusual violence. Said a London paper:

"Just when the signals from the Great Eastern ceased, a magnetic storm of singular violence had set in. Unperceived by us, not to be seen in the heavens, nor felt in the atmosphere, the earth's electricity underwent a mysterious disturbance. The recording instruments scattered about the kingdom, everywhere testified to the fury of this voiceless tempest, and there is every reason to suppose that the confusion of signals at midday on Wednesday was due to the strange and unusual earth-currents of magnetism, sweeping wildly across the cable as it lay in apparently untroubled waters at the bottom of the Atlantic."

Said the Times:

"At Valentia, on Wednesday last, the signals, up to nine a.m., were coming with wonderful distinctness and regularity, but about that time a violent magnetic storm set in. No insulation of a submarine cable is ever so perfect as to withstand the influence of these electrical phenomena, which correspond in some particulars to storms in the ordinary atmosphere, their direction generally being from east to west. Their action is immediately communicated to all conductors of electricity, and a struggle set up between the natural current and that used artificially in sending messages. This magnetic storm affected every telegraphic station in the kingdom. At some the wires were utterly useless; and between Valentia and Killarney the natural current toward the west was so strong along the land lines that it required an addition of five times the ordinary battery power to overcome it. This magnetic storm, which ceased at two a.m. on Friday, was instantly perceptible in the Atlantic cable."

But these explanations, so consoling to anxious friends on land, did not comfort those on board the Great Eastern. They knew, alas! that the cable was at the bottom of the ocean, and the only question was, if any thing could be done to recover it.

Now began a work of which there had been no example in the annals of the sea. The intrepid Canning declared his purpose to grapple for the cable! The proposal seemed wild, dictated by the frenzy of despair. Yet he had fished in deep waters before. He had laid his hand on the bottom of the Mediterranean, but that was a shallow lake compared with the depths into which the Atlantic cable had descended. The ocean is here two and a half miles deep. It was as if an Alpine hunter stood on the summit of Mont Blanc and cast a line into the vale of Chamouni. Yet who shall put bounds to human courage? The expedition was not to be abandoned without a trial of this forlorn hope. There were on board some five miles of wire rope, intended to hold the cable in case it became necessary to cut it and lash it to the buoys, to save it from being lost in a storm. This was brought on deck for another purpose. "And now came forth the grapnels, two five-armed anchors, with flukes sharply curved and tapered to a tooth-like end—the hooks with which the Giant Despair was going to fish from the Great Eastern for a take worth, with all its belongings, more than a million." These huge grappling-irons were firmly shackled to the end of the rope, and brought to the bows and thrown overboard. One splash, and the whole has disappeared in the bosom of the ocean. Down it goes—deeper, deeper, deeper still! For two full hours it continued sinking before it struck the earth, and like a pearl-diver, began searching for its lost treasure on the bottom of the sea. What did it find there? The wrecks of ships that had gone down a hundred years ago, with dead men's bones whitening in the deep sea caves? It sought for something more precious to the interest of civilization than gems and gold.

The ship was now a dozen miles or so from the place of accident. The cable had broken a little after noon, when the sun was shining clear, so that Captains Anderson and Moriarty had just obtained a perfect observation, from which they could tell, within half a mile, the very spot where it had gone down. To reach it now, with any chance of bringing it up, it would be necessary to hook it a few miles from the end. It had been paid out in a line from east to west. To strike it broadside, the ship stood off in the afternoon a few miles to the south. Here the grapnel was thrown over about three o'clock, and struck bottom about five, when the ship began slowly drifting back on her course. All night long those iron fingers were raking the bottom of the deep but grasping nothing, till toward morning the long rope quivered like a fisherman's line when something has seized the end, and the head of the Great Eastern began to sway from her course, as if it felt some unseen attraction. As they began to haul in, the rapidly increasing strain soon rendered it certain that they had got hold of something. But what could it be? How did they know it was their lost cable? This question has often been asked. They did not see it. How did they know that it was not the skeleton of a whale, or a mast or spar, the fragment of a wrecked ship? The question is easily answered. If it had been any loose object which was being drawn up from the sea, its weight would have diminished as it came nearer the surface. But on the contrary, the strain, as shown by the dynamometer, steadily increased. This could only be from some object lying prone on the bottom. To an engineer the proof was like a mathematical demonstration. Another fact observed by Captain Anderson was equally decisive:

"The grapnel had caught something at the exact hour when by calculation the ship was known to be crossing the line of the cable; nor had the grapnel upon this or any other occasion even for an instant caught any impediment from the time of its being lowered to the bottom, until the hour indicated by calculation, when the cable ought to be hooked."