Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made

by James Dabney McCabe

Mr. Canning, the engineer in charge, was dismayed, but not disheartened. For nine days the ship hung around the spot grappling for the cable, in the hope of raising it, and sinking its grapnels for this purpose to a depth of two miles. The cable was caught several times, but the rope which held the grapnel broke each time, and the precious coil fell back again into the deep. At length, having marked the place where the cable was lost with buoys, the ship put back for England, and the enterprise was abandoned for that year.

Though unsuccessful in carrying the cable across the ocean, this expedition was by no means a failure. Its results are thus summed up by the officers in charge of it:

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 one 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.