[A] Nearly a year and a half after this, when the cable was safely landed in Newfoundland, Captain Anderson, still on board the Great Eastern, in a letter to a friend, thus referred to his first connection with the Atlantic Telegraph:—
"I cannot tell you how I have felt since our success. It is only seventeen months since I first walked up to the top of the paddle-box of this ship at Sheerness, upon a dark, rainy night—reviewed my past career in my mind, and tried to look into the future, to see what I had undertaken, and realize if possible what this new step would develop. I cannot say I believed much in cables; I rather think I did not; but I did believe Mr. Field was an earnest man, of great force of character, and working under a strong conviction that what he was attempting was thoroughly practicable; and I knew enough of the names with which he had associated himself in the enterprise to feel that it was a real, true, honest effort, worthy of all the energy and application of one's manhood; and come what might in the future, I resolved to do my very utmost, and to do nothing else until it was over. More completely however than my resolve foreshadowed, I dropped inch by inch, or step by step, into the work, until I had no mind, no soul, no sleep, that was not tinged with cable. In a word I accuse Mr. Field of having dragged me into a vortex, that I could not get out of, and did not wish to try—and the sum total of all this is, to lay a thread across an ocean! Dr. Russell compared it to an elephant stretching a cobweb, and there lay its very danger: the more you multiply the mechanism, the more you increase the risk."
[B] "All during the night the process of picking up was carefully carried on, the Big Ship behaving beautifully, and hanging lightly over the cable, as if fearful of breaking the slender cord which swayed up and down in the ocean. Indeed, so delicately did she answer her helm, and coil in the film of thread-like cable over her bows, that she put one in mind of an elephant taking up a straw in its proboscis."—Russell.
[C] So exquisitely sensitive was the copper strand, that as the Great Eastern rolled, and so made the cable pass across the magnetic meridian, the induced current of electricity, incomprehensibly faint as it must have been, produced nevertheless a perceptible deviation of the ray of light on the mirror galvanometer at Foilhommerum.—London Times.
CHAPTER XV.
PREPARING TO RENEW THE BATTLE.
The expedition of 1865, though not an immediate success, had the moral effect of a victory, as it confirmed the most sanguine expectations of all who embarked in it. The great experiment made during those four weeks at sea, had demonstrated many points which were most important elements in the problem of Ocean Telegraphy. These are summed up in the following paper, which was signed by persons officially engaged on board the Great Eastern:
1. It was proved by the expedition of 1858, that a Submarine Telegraph Cable could be laid between Ireland and Newfoundland, and messages transmitted through the same.
By the expedition of 1865 it has been fully demonstrated:
2. That the insulation of a cable improves very much after its submersion in the cold deep water of the Atlantic, and that its conducting power is considerably increased thereby.
3. That the steamship Great Eastern, from her size and constant steadiness, and from the control over her afforded by the joint use of paddles and screw, renders it safe to lay an Atlantic Cable in any weather.
4. That in a depth of over two miles four attempts were made to grapple the cable. In three of them the cable was caught by the grapnel, and in the other the grapnel was fouled by the chain attached to it.
5. That the paying-out machinery used on board the Great Eastern worked perfectly, and can be confidently relied on for laying cables across the Atlantic.
6. That with the improved telegraphic instruments for long submarine lines, a speed of more than eight words per minute can be obtained through such a cable as the present Atlantic between Ireland and Newfoundland, as the amount of slack actually paid out did not exceed fourteen per cent, which would have made the total cable laid between Valentia and Heart's Content nineteen hundred miles.
7. That the present Atlantic Cable, though capable of bearing a strain of seven tons, did not experience more than fourteen hundred-weight in being paid out into the deepest water of the Atlantic between Ireland and Newfoundland.
8. That there is no difficulty in mooring buoys in the deep water of the Atlantic between Ireland and Newfoundland, and that two buoys even when moored by a piece of the Atlantic Cable itself, which had been previously lifted from the bottom, have ridden out a gale.
9. That more than four nautical miles of the Atlantic Cable have been recovered from a depth of over two miles, and that the insulation of the gutta-percha-covered wire was in no way whatever impaired by the depth of water or the strains to which it had been subjected by lifting and passing through the hauling-in apparatus.
10. That the cable of 1865, owing to the improvements introduced into the manufacture of the gutta-percha core, was more than one hundred times better insulated than cables made in 1858, then considered perfect and still working.
11. That the electrical testing can be conducted with such unerring accuracy as to enable the electricians to discover the existence of a fault immediately after its production or development, and very quickly to ascertain its position in the cable.
12. That with a steam-engine attached to the paying-out machinery, should a fault be discovered on board whilst laying the cable, it is possible that it might be recovered before it had reached the bottom of the Atlantic, and repaired at once.
S. Canning, Engineer-in-Chief, Telegraph Construction and Maintenance Company.
James Anderson, Commander of the Great Eastern.
Henry A. Moriarty, Staff Commander, R. N.
Daniel Gooch, M.P., Chairman of "Great Ship Co."
Henry Clifford, Engineer.
William Thomson, LL.D., F.R.S., Prof. of Natural Philosophy in the University of Glasgow.
Cromwell F. Varley, Consulting Electrician Electric and International Telegraph Co.
Willoughby Smith.
Jules Despecher.
This was a grand result to be attained in one short month; and if not quite so gratifying as to have the cable laid at once, and the wire in full operation, yet as it settled the chief elements of success, the moral effect was next to that of an immediate triumph. All who were on that voyage felt a confidence such as they had never felt before. They came back, not desponding and discouraged, but buoyant with hope, and ready at once to renew the attempt.