The story of the laying of the first ocean cable is worthy of the telling in any language, but should be especially interesting to the American boy and girl. It is a story of native enterprise and persistence; perhaps the most remarkable of them all.
The earliest ocean telegraph was that laid by two men named Brett, across the English Channel. For this cable, a pioneer though crossing only a narrow water, the conservative officials of the British government refused a charter. In August, 1850, they laid a single copper wire covered with gutta-percha from Dover in England to the coast of France. The first wire was soon broken, and a second was made consisting of several strands, and this last was soon imitated in various short reaches of water in Europe.
But the Atlantic had always been considered unfathomable. No line had ever sounded its depths, and its strong currents had invariably swept away the heaviest weights before they reached its bed. Its great feature, so far as known, was that strange ocean river first noted and described by Franklin, and known to us as the Gulf Stream. In 1853 a circumstance occurred which again turned the attention of a few men to the question of an Atlantic cable. Lieutenant Berryman, of the Navy, made a survey of the bottom of the Atlantic from Newfoundland to Ireland, and the wonderful discovery was made that the floor of the ocean was a vast plain, not more than two miles below the surface, extending from one continent to the other. This plain is about four hundred miles wide and sixteen hundred long, and there are no currents to disturb the mass of broken shells and unknown fishes that lie on its oozy surface. It was named the "Telegraphic Plateau," with a view to its future use. At either edge of this plateau huge mountains, from four to seven thousand feet high, rise out of the depths. There are precipices of sheer descent down which the cable now hangs. The Azores and Bermudas are peaks of ocean mountains. The warm river known as the Gulf Stream, coming northward meets the ice-bergs and melts them, and deposits the shells, rocks and sand they carry on this plain. When it was discovered the difficulty in the way of an Atlantic cable seemed no longer to exist, and those who had been anxious to engage in the enterprise began to bestir themselves.
Of these the most active was the American, Cyrus W. Field. He began life as a clerk in New York City. When thirty-five years old he became engaged in the building of a land line of telegraph across Newfoundland, the purpose of which was to transmit news brought by a fast line of steamers intended to be established, and the idea is said to have occurred to him of making a line not only so far, but across the sea. In November, 1856, he had succeeded in forming a company, and the entire capital, amounting to 350,000 pounds, was subscribed. The governments of England and the United States promised a subsidy to the stockholders. The cable was made in England. The Niagara was assigned by the United States, and the Agamemnon by England, each attended by smaller vessels, to lay the cable. In August, 1857, the Niagara left the coast of Ireland, dropping her cable into the sea. Even when it dropped suddenly down the steep escarpment to the great plateau the current still flowed. But through the carelessness of an assistant the cable parted. That was the beginning of mishaps. The task was not to be so easily done, and the enterprise was postponed until the following year.
That next year was still more memorable for triumph and disappointment. It was now designed that the two vessels should meet in mid-ocean, unite the ends of the cable, and sail slowly to opposite shores. There were fearful storms. The huge Agamemnon, overloaded with her half of the cable, was almost lost. But finally the spot in the waste and middle of the Atlantic was reached, the sea was still, and the vessels steamed away from each other slowly uncoiling into the sea their two halves of the second cable. It parted again, and the two ships returned to Ireland.
In July they again met in mid-ocean. Europe and America were both charitably deriding the splendid enterprise. All faith was lost. It was known, to journalism especially, that the cable would never be laid and that the enterprise was absurd. But it was like the laying of the first land line. There was a way to do it, existing in the brains and faith of men, though at first that way was not known. From this third meeting the two ships again sailed away, the Niagara for America, the Agamemnon for Valencia Bay. This time the wire did not part, and on August 29th, 1858, the old world and the new were bound together for the first time, and each could read almost the thoughts of the other. The queen saluted America, and the president replied. There were salutes of cannon and the ringing of bells. But the messages by the cable grew indistinct day by day, and finally ceased. The Atlantic cable had been laid, and--had failed.
Eight years followed, and the cable lay forgotten at the bottom of the sea. The reign of peace on earth and good will to men had so far failed to come and they were years of tumult and bitterness. The Union of the United States was called upon to defend its integrity in a great war. A bitter enmity grew up between us and England. The telegraph, and all its persevering projectors, were almost absolutely forgotten. Electricians declared the project utterly impracticable, and it began, finally, to be denied that any messages had ever crossed the Atlantic at all, and Field and his associates were discredited. It was said that the current could not be made to pass through so long a circuit. New routes were spoken of--across Bering's Strait, and overland by way of Siberia--and measures began to be taken to carry this scheme into effect.
Amid these discouragements, Field and his associates revived their company, made a new cable, and provided everything that science could then suggest to aid final success. This new cable was more perfect than any of the former ones, and there was a mammoth side-wheel steamer known as the Great Eastern, unavailable as it proved for the ordinary uses of commerce, and this vessel was large enough to carry the entire cable in her hold. In July, 1865, the huge steamer left Ireland, dropping the endless coil into the sea. The same men were engaged in this last attempt that had failed in all the previous ones. It is one of the most memorable instances of perseverance on record. But on August 6th a flaw occurred, and the cable was being drawn up for repairs. The sound of the wheel suddenly stopped; the cable broke and sunk into the depths. The Great Eastern returned unsuccessful to her port.
Field was present on board on this occasion, and had been present on several similar ones. There was, so far as known, no record made by him of his thoughts. There were now five cables in the bed of the Atlantic, and each one had carried down with it a large sum of money, and a still larger sum of hopes. Yet the Great Eastern sailed again in July, 1866, her tanks filled with new cable and Field once more on her decks. It was the last, and the successful attempt. The cable sank steadily and noiselessly into the sea, and on July 26th the steamer sailed into Trinity Bay. The connection was made at Heart's Content, a little New Foundland fishing village, and one for this occasion admirably named. Then the lost cable of 1865 was found, raised and spliced.
In these later times, if a flaw should occur, science would locate it, and go and repair it. Even if this were not true, the fact remains that this last cable, and that of 1865, have been carrying their messages under the sea for nearly thirty years. The lesson is that repeated failures do not mean final failure. There is often said to be a malice, a spirit of rebellion, in inanimate things. They refuse to become slaves until they are once and for all utterly subdued, and then they are docile forever. Yet the malice truly lies in the inaptitude and inexperience of men. Had Field and his associates known how to make and lay an Atlantic cable in the beginning as well as they did in the end, the first one laid would have been successful. The years were passed in the invention of machinery for laying, and in improving the construction of each successive cable. Many have been laid since then, certainly and without failure. Men have learned how. [[24]]