Heroes of the Telegraph

by John Munro

On leaving Fairbairn's he was engaged for a time on a survey for the proposed Lukmanier Railway, in Switzerland, and in 1856 he entered the engineering works of Mr. Penn, at Greenwich, as a draughtsman, and was occupied on the plans of a vessel designed for the Crimean war. He did not care for his berth, and complained of its late hours, his rough comrades, with whom he had to be 'as little like himself as possible,' and his humble lodgings, 'across a dirty green and through some half-built streets of two-storied houses.... Luckily,' he adds, 'I am fond of my profession, or I could not stand this life.' There was probably no real hardship in his present situation, and thousands of young engineers go through the like experience at the outset of their career without a murmur,' and even with enjoyment; but Jenkin had been his mother's pet until then, with a girl's delicate training, and probably felt the change from home more keenly on that account. At night he read engineering and mathematics, or Carlyle and the poets, and cheered his drooping spirits with frequent trips to London to see his mother.

Another social pleasure was his visits to the house of Mr. Alfred Austin, a barrister, who became permanent secretary to Her Majesty's Office of Works and Public Buildings, and retired in 1868 with the title of C.B. His wife, Eliza Barron, was the youngest daughter of Mr. E. Barron, a gentleman of Norwich, the son of a rich saddler, or leather-seller, in the Borough, who, when a child, had been patted on the head, in his father's shop, by Dr. Johnson, while canvassing for Mr. Thrale. Jenkin had been introduced to the Austins by a letter from Mrs. Gaskell, and was charmed with the atmosphere of their choice home, where intellectual conversation was happily united with kind and courteous manners, without any pretence or affectation. 'Each of the Austins,' says Mr. Stevenson, in his memoir of Jenkin, to which we are much indebted, 'was full of high spirits; each practised something of the same repression; no sharp word was uttered in the house. The same point of honour ruled them: a guest was sacred, and stood within the pale from criticism.' In short, the Austins were truly hospitable and cultured, not merely so in form and appearance. It was a rare privilege and preservative for a solitary young man in Jenkin's position to have the entry into such elevating society, and he appreciated his good fortune.

Annie Austin, their only child, had been highly educated, and knew Greek among other things. Though Jenkin loved and admired her parents, he did not at first care for Annie, who, on her part, thought him vain, and by no means good-looking. Mr. Stevenson hints that she vanquished his stubborn heart by correcting a 'false quantity' of his one day, for he was the man to reflect over a correction, and 'admire the castigator.' Be this as it may, Jenkin by degrees fell deeply in love with her.

He was poor and nameless, and this made him diffident; but the liking of her parents for him gave him hope. Moreover, he had entered the service of Messrs. Liddell and Gordon, who were engaged in the new work of submarine telegraphy, which satisfied his aspirations, and promised him a successful career. With this new-born confidence in his future, he solicited the Austins for leave to court their daughter, and it was not withheld. Mrs. Austin consented freely, and Mr. Austin only reserved the right to inquire into his character. Neither of them mentioned his income or prospects, and Jenkin, overcome by their disinterestedness, exclaimed in one of his letters, 'Are these people the same as other people?' Thus permitted, he addressed himself to Annie, and was nearly rejected for his pains. Miss Austin seems to have resented his courtship of her parents first; but the mother's favour, and his own spirited behaviour, saved him, and won her consent.

Then followed one of the happiest epochs in Jenkin's life. After leaving Penn's he worked at railway engineering for a time under Messrs. Liddell and Gordon; and, in 1857, became engineer to Messrs. R. S. Newall & Co., of Gateshead, who shared the work of making the first Atlantic cable with Messrs. Glass, Elliott & Co., of Greenwich. Jenkin was busy designing and fitting up machinery for cableships, and making electrical experiments. 'I am half crazy with work,' he wrote to his betrothed; 'I like it though: it's like a good ball, the excitement carries you through.' Again he wrote, 'My profession gives me all the excitement and interest I ever hope for.'... 'I am at the works till ten, and sometimes till eleven. But I have a nice office to sit in, with a fire to myself, and bright brass scientific instruments all round me, and books to read, and experiments to make, and enjoy myself amazingly. I find the study of electricity so entertaining that I am apt to neglect my other work.'... 'What shall I compare them to,' he writes of some electrical experiments, 'a new song? or a Greek play?' In the spring of 1855 he was fitting out the s.s. Elba, at Birkenhead, for his first telegraph cruise. It appears that in 1855 Mr. Henry Brett attempted to lay a cable across the Mediterranean between Cape Spartivento, in the south of Sardinia, and a point near Bona, on the coast of Algeria. It was a gutta-percha cable of six wires or conductors, and manufactured by Messrs. Glass & Elliott, of Greenwich—a firm which afterwards combined with the Gutta-Percha Company, and became the existing Telegraph Construction and Maintenance Company. Mr. Brett laid the cable from the Result, a sailing ship in tow, instead of a more manageable steamer; and, meeting with 600 fathoms of water when twenty-five miles from land, the cable ran out so fast that a tangled skein came up out of the hold, and the line had to be severed. Having only 150 miles on board to span the whole distance of 140 miles, he grappled the lost cable near the shore, raised it, and 'under-run' or passed it over the ship, for some twenty miles, then cut it, leaving the seaward end on the bottom. He then spliced the ship's cable to the shoreward end and resumed his paying-out; but after seventy miles in all were laid, another rapid rush of cable took place, and Mr. Brett was obliged to cut and abandon the line.

Another attempt was made the following year, but with no better success. Mr. Brett then tried to lay a three-wire cable from the steamer Dutchman, but owing to the deep water—in some places 1500 fathoms—its egress was so rapid, that when he came to a few miles from Galita, his destination on the Algerian coast, he had not enough cable to reach the land. He therefore telegraphed to London for more cable to be made and sent out, while the ship remained there holding to the end. For five days he succeeded in doing so, sending and receiving messages; but heavy weather came on, and the cable parted, having, it is said, been chafed through by rubbing on the bottom. After that Mr. Brett went home.

It was to recover the lost cable of these expeditions that the Elba was got ready for sea. Jenkin had fitted her out the year before for laying the Cagliari to Malta and Corfu cables; but on this occasion she was better equipped. She had a new machine for picking up the cable, and a sheave or pulley at the bows for it to run over, both designed by Jenkin, together with a variety of wooden buoys, ropes, and chains. Mr. Liddell, assisted by Mr. F. C. Webb and Fleeming Jenkin, were in charge of the expedition. The latter had nothing to do with the electrical work, his care being the deck machinery for raising the cable; but it entailed a good deal of responsibility, which was flattering and agreeable to a young man of his parts.

'I own I like responsibility,' he wrote to Miss Austin, while fitting up the vessel; 'it flatters one; and then, your father might say, I have more to gain than lose. Moreover, I do like this bloodless, painless combat with wood and iron, forcing the stubborn rascals to do my will, licking the clumsy cubs into an active shape, seeing the child of to-day's thought working to-morrow in full vigour at his appointed task.' Another letter, dated May 17, gives a picture of the start. 'Not a sailor will join us till the last moment; and then, just as the ship forges ahead through the narrow pass, beds and baggage fly on board, the men, half tipsy, clutch at the rigging, the captain swears, the women scream and sob, the crowd cheer and laugh, while one or two pretty little girls stand still and cry outright, regardless of all eyes.'

The Elba arrived at Bona on June 3, and Jenkin landed at Fort Genova, on Cape Hamrah, where some Arabs were building a land line. 'It was a strange scene,' he writes, 'far more novel than I had imagined; the high, steep bank covered with rich, spicy vegetation, of which I hardly knew one plant. The dwarf palm, with fan-like leaves, growing about two feet high, forms the staple verdure.' After dining in Fort Genova, he had nothing to do but watch the sailors ordering the Arabs about under the 'generic term "Johnny."' He began to tire of the scene, although, as he confesses, he had willingly paid more money for less strange and lovely sights. Jenkin was not a dreamer; he disliked being idle, and if he had had a pencil he would have amused himself in sketching what he saw. That his eyes were busy is evident from the particulars given in his letter, where he notes the yellow thistles and 'Scotch-looking gowans' which grow there, along with the cistus and the fig-tree.

They left Bona on June 5, and, after calling at Cagliari and Chia, arrived at Cape Spartivento on the morning of June 8. The coast here is a low range of heathy hills, with brilliant green bushes and marshy pools. Mr. Webb remarks that its reputation for fever was so bad as to cause Italian men-of-war to sheer off in passing by. Jenkin suffered a little from malaria, but of a different origin. 'A number of the SATURDAY REVIEW here,' he writes; 'it reads so hot and feverish, so tomb-like and unhealthy, in the midst of dear Nature's hills and sea, with good wholesome work to do.'