(Signed) “JAMES BUCHANAN.”
On the same day a message was received from Mr. C. Field, consisting of 38 words, which occupied 22 minutes in transmission.
The mighty agency which had been made subservient to the dictates of man, had touched the hearts of two nations by expressing mutual esteem and respect, but had not yet exercised its higher prerogatives. On the 21st of August it flashed tidings of great joy, and brought relief to those who, but for it, would have languished in very weariness and pining. The Europa and Arabia, each thickly freighted with human lives, had come into collision in mid-ocean. So much was known, but there was nothing to appease the anxiety of those whose friends and relatives were on board. Fourteen days must elapse before the arrival of the next steamer. Within fourteen hours, however, the Atlantic telegraph wires allayed intense dread and anxious fears: “Newfoundland.—Europa and Arabia have been in collision—one has put into St. John’s—no lives are lost—all well.”
On the 25th of August it was announced that “the Cable works splendidly,” and shortly after the New York journals recorded how the entire continent had gone mad for very joy, how feasting was the order of the day, and how American intellect had achieved the greatest scientific triumph of the age.
On the 7th of September, 1858, the following letter appeared in the Times, addressed to the editor:—
“September 6th, 1858.
“SIR,—I am instructed by the Directors to inform you that, owing to some cause not at present ascertained, but believed to arise from a fault existing in the Cable at a point hitherto undiscovered, there have been no intelligible signals from Newfoundland since one o’clock on Friday the 3rd inst. The Directors are now in Valentia, and, aided by various scientific and practical electricians, are investigating the cause of the stoppage, with a view to remedying the existing difficulty. Under these circumstances no time can be named at present for opening the wire to the public.
“GEO. SAWARD.”
Such was the foreshadowing of the great calamity that was so soon to follow. Public excitement became intense. The market value of the Atlantic Telegraph Stock assumed a downward tendency, and fell rapidly. But the projectors had not been idle. A rigid inquiry had been immediately instituted by Professor Thomson, Mr. Varley, and Sir Charles Bright, which enabled them to arrive at a conclusion that the fault must lie on the Irish coast. Consequently the Cable was underrun for three miles, cut and tested; but no defect being found, it was again spliced. During all this period its electrical condition had become so much deteriorated that such messages as passed required to be constantly repeated.
So matters went, hope and fear alternating, until the insulation of the wire became suddenly worse, and at last the signals ceased to be intelligible at Newfoundland altogether. Scientific inquiry tended to show that the fault lay about 270 miles from Valentia, at the mountain range which divides the depths of the Atlantic from the shallow water on the Irish shore. This steep range, or sloping bank, which, on being sounded, showed a difference of 7,200 feet in elevation in a distance of eight miles, had been crossed by the Agamemnon an hour before the expected time, and it was said a sufficient quantity of slack had not been thrown out, so that the Cable was suffered to hang suspended in the water. But this was of course mere conjecture, and the failure most probably was precipitated by injudicious attempts to overcome defective insulation by increased battery power.