The Atlantic Telegraph (1865)

by Sir William Howard Russell

The chain and rope were at last secured to the Cable, under the eyes of Mr. Canning. It was then 9·53 a.m. The indicator stood at 376·595, showing that 1,186 miles of Cable had been payed-out. At 9·58 a.m. (Greenwich time), the Cable was cut and slipped overboard astern, fastened to its iron guardians. The depth of water was estimated at 2000 fathoms. As it went over and down in its fatal dive, one of the men said, “Away goes our talk with Valentia.” Mr. de Sauty did not inform the operator at Valentia of the nature of the abrupt stoppage. We had now become so hardened to the dangers of the slip overboard, and the sight of the Cable straining for its life in contest with the Big Ship, that the cutting and slipping excited no apprehension; but nothing could reconcile men to the picking-up machinery, and its monotonous retrogression. The wind was on our starboard beam, and the Cable was slipped over at the port quarter, and carried round on the port side towards the ship’s bows, in order that the vessel might go over it, and then come up more readily to the Cable, head to wind, when the picking-up began. The drift of the ship was considerable, and it was not easy—indeed, possible—to control her movements; but, notwithstanding all this, the wire buoy-rope was got up to the machinery in reasonable time. Still the ship’s head—do what Capt. Anderson would, and he did as much as any man could—did not come round easily. Even a punt will not turn if she has no way on her, and it takes a good deal of way—more than she could get with safety to the Cable—to give steerage to the Great Eastern. As she slowly drifted and came round by degrees quite imperceptible to those who did not keep a close watch on the compass, the wire rope was payed-out; and at last, as the ship’s bows turned, it was taken in over the machinery, and was passed aft through the drums, and the picking-up apparatus coiled it in very slowly away till the end of the Cable was hauled up out of the sea.

It was 10·30 a.m., Greenwich time, when the Cable came in over the bow. We were now in very deep water, but had we been a few miles more to the west we should have been over the very deepest part of the Atlantic Plateau. It was believed the fault was only six miles away, and ere dead nightfall we might hope to have the fault on board, make a new splice, and proceed on our way to Heart’s Content, geographically about 600 miles away. The picking-up was, as usual, exceedingly tedious, and one hour and forty-six minutes elapsed before one mile of Cable was got on board; then one of the engines’ eccentric gear got out of order, and a man had to stand by with a handspike, aided by a wedge of wood and an elastic band, to aid the machinery. Next the supply of steam failed; and as soon then as the steam was got up, there was not water enough in the boiler, and so the picking-up ceased altogether. But at last all these impediments were remedied or overcome, and the operation was proceeded with before noon. Let the reader turn his face towards a window and imagine that he is standing on the bows of the Great Eastern, and then on his right will be the starboard, on his left the port side of the ship. The motion of the vessel was from right to left, and as she drifted, she tugged at the Cable from the right hand side, where he seemed to be anchored in the sea. There was not much rolling or pitching, but the set of the waves ran on her port-bow. There are in the bows of the Great Eastern two large hawse-pipes, the iron rims of which project beyond the line of the stem; against one of these the Cable caught on the left-hand side whilst the ship was drifting to the left, and soon began to chafe and strain against the bow. The Great Eastern could not go astern, lest the Cable should be snapped, and without motion there was no power of steerage. At this critical moment, too, the wind shifted, so as to render it more difficult to keep the head of the ship up to the Cable. As the Cable chafed so much that there was danger of its parting, a shackle, chain, and rope belonging to one of the Cable-buoys were passed over the bows, and secured in a bight below the hawse-pipe to the Cable. These were then hauled so as to bring the Cable to the right-hand side of the bow, the ship still drifting to the left, and the oblique strain on the wires became considerable, but it was impossible to diminish it by veering out, as the length of Cable after it was cut at the stern for the operation of picking-up left little to spare. In the bow there is a large iron wheel with a deep groove in the circumference (technically called a V wheel), by the side of which is a similar but smaller wheel on the same axis. The Cable and the rope together were brought in over the bows in the groove in the larger wheel, the Cable being wound upon a drum behind by the picking-up machinery, which was once more in motion, and the rope being taken in round the capstan. But the rope and Cable did not come up in a right line in the V in the wheel, but were drawn up obliquely. Still, up they came. The strain shown on the dynamometer was high, but was not near the breaking point. The part of the Cable which had suffered from chafing was coming in, and the first portion of it was inboard; suddenly a jar was given to the dynamometer by a jerk, caused either by a heave of the vessel or by the shackle of wire-rope secured to the Cable, and the index jumped far above 60 cwt., the highest point marked on it. The chain shackle and wire-rope clambered up out of the groove of the V wheel, got on the rim, and rushed down with a crash on the smaller wheel, giving a severe shock to the Cable. Almost at the same moment, as the Cable and the rope travelled slowly along through the machinery, just ere they reached the dynamometer the Cable parted, flew through the stoppers, and with one bound leaped over intervening space and flashed into the sea. The shock of the instant was as sharp as the snapping of the Cable itself. No words could describe the bitterness of the disappointment. The Cable gone! gone for ever down in that fearful depth! It was enough to move one to tears; and when a man came with the piece of the end lashed still to the chain, and showed the tortured strands—the torn wires—the lacerated core—it is no exaggeration to say that a feeling of pity, as if it were some sentient creature which had been thus mutilated and dragged asunder by brutal force, moved the spectators. Captain Moriarty was just coming to the foot of the companion to put up his daily statement of the ship’s position, having had excellent observations, when the news came. “I fear,” he said, “we will not feel much interested now in knowing how far we are from Heart’s Content.” However, it was something to know, though it was little comfort, that we had at noon run precisely 116·4 miles since yesterday; that we were 1,062·4 miles from Valentia, 606·6 miles from Heart’s Content; that we were in Lat. 51° 25´, Long. 39° 6´, our course being 76° S. and 25° W. But instant strenuous action was demanded! Alas! action! There around us lay the placid Atlantic smiling in the sun, and not a dimple to show where lay so many hopes buried. The Terrible was signalled to, “the Cable has parted,” and soon bore down to us, and came-to off our port beam. After brief consideration, Mr. Canning resolved to make an attempt to recover the Cable. Never, we thought, had alchemist less chance of finding a gold button in the dross from which he was seeking aurum potabile, or philosopher’s stone. But, then, what would they say in England, if not even an attempt, however desperate, were made? There were men on board who had picked up Cables from the Mediterranean 700 fathoms down. The weather was beautiful, but we had no soundings, and the depth was matter of conjecture; still it was settled that the Great Eastern should steam to windward and eastward of the position in which she was when the Cable went down, lower a grapnel, and drift down across the course of the track in which the Cable was supposed to be lying. Although all utterance of hope was suppressed, and no word of confidence escaped the lips, the mocking shadows of both were treasured in some quiet nook of the fancy. The doctrine of chances could not touch such a contingency as we had to speculate upon. The ship stood away some 13 or 14 miles from the spot where the accident occurred, and there lay-to in smooth water, with the Terrible in company. The grapnel, two five-armed anchors, with flukes sharply curved and tapering to an oblique tooth-like end—the hooks with which the giant Despair was going to fish from the Great Eastern for a take worth, with all its belongings, more than a million, were brought up to the bows. One of these, weighing 3 cwt., shackled and secured to wire buoy rope, of which there were five miles on board, with a breaking strain calculated at 10 tons, was thrown over at 3·20, ship’s time, and “whistled thro’” the sea, a prey to fortune. At first the iron sank slowly, but soon the momentum of descent increased, so as to lay great stress on the picking-up machinery, which was rendered available to lowering the novel messenger with warrant of search for the fugitive hidden in mysterious caverns beneath. Length flew after length over cog-wheel and drum till the iron, warming with work, heated so as to convert the water thrown upon the machinery into clouds of steam. The time passed heavily. The electricians’ room was closed; all their subtle apparatus stood functionless, and cell, zinc, and copper threw off superfluous currents in the darkened chamber. The jockeys had run their race, and reposed in their iron saddles. The drums beat no more, their long réveillée ended in the muffled roll of death; that which had been broken could give no trouble to break, and man shunned the region where all these mute witnesses were testifying to the vanity of human wishes. All life died out in the vessel, and no noise was heard except the dull grating of the wire-rope over the wheels at the bows. The most apathetic would have thought the rumble of the Cable the most grateful music in the world.

Away slipped the wire strands, shackle after shackle: ocean was indeed insatiable; “more” and “more,” cried the daughter of horse-leech from the black night of waters, and still the rope descended. One thousand fathoms—fifteen hundred fathoms—two thousand fathoms—hundreds again mounting up—till at last, at 5·6 p.m., the strain was diminished, and at 2,500 fathoms, or 15,000 feet, the grapnel reached the bed of the Atlantic, and set to its task of finding and holding the Cable. Where that lay was of course beyond human knowledge; but as the ship drifted down across its course, there was just a sort of head-shaking surmise that the grapnel might catch it, that the ship might feel it, that the iron-rope might be brought up again—and that the Cable across it might—here was the most hazardous hitch of all—might come up without breaking. But 2,500 fathoms! Alas!—and so in the darkness of the night—not more gloomy than her errand—the Great Eastern, having cleared away one of the great buoys and got it over her bows, was left as a sport to the wind, and drifted, at the rate of 70 feet a minute, down upon the imaginary line where the Cable had sunk to useless rest. \

August 3rd.—All through the night’s darkness the Great Eastern groped along the bottom with the grapnel as the wind drifted her, but cunning hands had placed the ship so that her course lay right athwart the line for which she was fishing. There were many on board who believed the grapnel would not catch anything but a rock, and that if it caught a rock or anything else it would break itself or the line without anyone on board being the wiser for it. Others contended the Cable would be torn asunder by the grapnel. Others calculated the force required to draw up two miles and a-half of the Cable to the surface, and to drag along the bottom the length of line needed to give a bight to the Cable caught in the grapnel, so as to permit it to mount two and a-half miles to the deck of the Great Eastern. After the grapnel touched the bottom, which was at 7·45 o’clock, p.m., last night, when 2,500 fathoms of rope were payed-out, the strain for an hour and a-half did not exceed 55 cwt.; but at 10 p.m. it rose to 80 cwt. for a short time, and the head of the ship yielded a little from its course and came up to the wind. It then fell off as the strain was reduced to 55 cwt. which apparently was the normal force put on the ship by the weight of the rope and grapnel. This morning the same strain was shown by the dynamometer, and it varied very slightly from midnight till 6 o’clock a.m. Then the bow of the ship and the index of the dynamometer coincided in their testimony, and whilst the Great Eastern swayed gradually and turned her head towards the wind, the index of the machine recorded an increasing pressure. It began to be seen that there was some agency working to alter the course of the ship, and the dynamometer showed a strain of 70 cwt. The news soon spread; men rushed from compass to dynamometer. “We have caught it! we have caught it!” was heard from every lip.

There was in this little world of ours as much ever-varying excitement, as much elation and depression, as if it were a focus into which converged the joys and sorrows of humanity. When the Great Eastern first became sensible of the stress brought upon her by the grappling iron and rope she shook her head, and kept on her course, disappointing the hopes of those who were watching the dynamometer, and who saw with delight the rising strain. This happened several times. It was for a long time doubtful whether the grapnel held to anything more tenacious than the ooze, which for a moment arrested its progress and then gave way with a jerk as the ship drifted; but in the early morning, the long steady pull made it evident the curved prongs had laid their grip on a solid body, which yielded slowly to the pressure of the vessel as she went to leeward, but at the same time resisted so forcibly as to slew round her bow. The scientific men calculated the force exercised by grapnel and rope alone to be far less than that now shown on the dynamometer. And if the Great Eastern had indeed got hold of a substance in the bottom of the Atlantic at once so tenacious and so yielding, what could it be but the lost Cable?

At 6·40 a.m., Greenwich time, the bow of the ship was brought up to the grapnel line. The machinery was set to work to pull up the 2,500 fathoms of rope. The index of the dynamometer, immediately on the first revolutions of the wheels and drums, rose to 85 cwt. The operation was of course exceedingly tedious, and its difficulty was increased by the nature of the rope, which was not made in a continuous piece, but in lengths of 100 fathoms each, secured by shackles and swivels of large size, and presumably of proportionate strength. It was watched with intense interest. The bows were crowded, in spite of the danger to which the spectators were exposed by the snapping of the wire-rope, which might have caused them serious and fatal injuries. At 7·15 o’clock, a.m., the first 100 fathoms of rope were in, and the great iron shackle and swivel at the end of the length were regarded with some feelings of triumph. At 7·55 a.m. the second length of 100 fathoms was on board, the strain varying from 65 to 75 cwt. At 8·10 a.m., when 400 fathoms had been purchased in and coiled away, the driving spur-wheel of the machinery broke, and the rope snapped, the strain being 90 cwt. at the time. The whole of the two miles of wire rope, grapnel and all, would have been lost, but that the stoppers caught the shackle at the end, and saved the experiment from a fatal termination. The operation was suspended for a short time, in order to permit the damage to be made good, and the rope was transferred to the capstan. The hazardous nature of the work, owing to the straining and jerking of the wire rope, was painfully evinced by the occurrence of accidents to two of the best men on Mr. Canning’s staff—one of whom was cut on the face, and the other had his jaw laid open. At noon nearly half a mile of rope was gathered in. With every length of Cable drawn up from the sea, the spirits of all on board became lighter, and whilst we all talked of the uncertainty of such an accomplishment, there was a sentiment stronger than any one would care to avow, inspiring the secret confidence that, having caught the Cable in this extraordinary manner, we should get it up at last, and end our strange eventful history by a triumphant entry to Heart’s Content. Already there were divers theories started as to the best way of getting the Cable on board, for if Mr. Canning ever saw the bight, the obvious question arose, “What will he do with it?” The whole of our speculations were abruptly terminated at 2·50 o’clock, p.m. As the shackle and swivel of the eleventh length of rope, which would have made a mile on board, were passing the machinery, the head of the swivel pin was wrung off by the strain, and the 1,400 fathoms of line, with grapnel attached, rushed down again to the bottom of the Atlantic, carrying with it the bight of Cable. The shock was bitter and sharp. The nature of the mishap was quite unforeseen. The engineers had calculated that the wire rope might part, or that the Cable itself might break at the bight, but no one had thought of the stout iron shackles and swivels yielding. To add to the gloominess of the situation, the fog, which had so long been hanging round the ship, settled down densely, and obliged the Great Eastern to proceed with extreme caution. But although the event damped, it did not extinguish, the hopes of the engineers. Mr. Canning and Mr. Clifford at once set their staff to bend 2,500 fathoms of spare wire rope to another grapnel, and to prepare a buoy to mark the spot as nearly as could be guessed where the rope had parted, and gone down with the bight of the Cable. The Great Eastern was to steam away to windward of the course of the Cable, and then drift down upon it about three miles west of the place where the accident occurred. Fog whistles were blown to warn the Terrible of our change of position, and at 1·30, ship’s time, the Great Eastern, as she steamed slowly away, fired a gun, to which a real or fancied response was heard soon afterwards. As she went ahead, guns were fired every 20 minutes, and the steam-whistles were kept going, but no reply was made, and she proceeded on her course alone. It was impossible to obtain a noon-day observation, and the only course to be pursued was to steam to windward for 14 or 15 miles, then to lay-to and drift, in the hope of procuring a favourable position for letting go the second grapnel, and catching the Cable once more.

August 4th.—The morning found the Great Eastern drifting in a dense fog. In order to gauge the nature of the task before them, the engineers fitted up a sounding tackle of all the spare line they could get, and hove it overboard with a heavy lead attached. The sinker, it is believed, touched bottom at 2,300 fathoms, but it never came up to tell the tale. The line broke when the men were pulling it in, and 2000 fathoms of cord were added to the maze of Cable and wire rope with which the bed of the Atlantic must be vexed hereabouts. The fog cleared away in the morning, and the Terrible was visible astern. Presently one of her boats put off, with a two-mile pull before her, for the Great Eastern. Lieutenant Prowse was sent to know what we had been doing, and what we intended to do. He returned to his ship with the information that Mr. Canning, full of determination, if not of hope, would renew his attempt to grapple the Cable, and haul it up once more. At noon, Captain Anderson and Staff-Commander Moriarty, who had been very much perplexed at the obstinate refusal of the sun to shine, and might be seen any time between 8 a.m. and noon parading the bridge sextant in hand, taking sights at space, succeeded in obtaining an observation, which gave our position Lat. 51° 34´ 30´´, Long. 37° 54´. The Great Eastern had drifted 34 miles from the place where the Cable parted, and as she had steamed 12 miles, her position was 46 miles to the east of the end of the Cable.

Meantime the engineers’ staff were busy making a solid strong raft of timber balks, 8 feet square, to serve as a base to a buoy to be anchored in 2,500 fathoms, as near as possible to the course of the Cable, and some miles to the westward of the place where the grapnel-rope parted. A portion of Cable, which had been a good deal strained, was used as tackle, for the purpose of securing the raft and buoy to a mushroom anchor. The buoy, which we shall call No. 1, was painted red, and was surmounted by a black ball, above which rose a staff, bearing a red flag. It was securely lashed on the raft. At 10 p.m., Greenwich time, the buoy No. 1 was hove overboard, and sailed away over the grey leaden water till it was brought up by the anchor in Lat. 51° 28´, Long. 38° 42´ 30´´. The Great Eastern, having thus marked a spot on the ocean, proceeded on her cruise, to take up a position which might enable her to cross the Cable with the new grapnel, and try fortune once more. Some researches made among the coils of telegraph Cable confirmed the opinion, that the iron wires in the outer protective coating were the sources of all our calamities, and fortified the position of those who maintained that the faults were the result of accident. In some instances the wires were started; in others they were broken in the strands. By twisting the wire, great variations in quality became apparent. Some portions were very tough, others snapped like steel. It is to be regretted that the scientific council who recommended the Cable did not test some parts of it in the paying-out apparatus with a severe strain, as they might have detected the inherent faults in the fabric. It is quite possible hundreds of broken ends exist in the Cable already laid, though they have done no harm to the insulation.