“Sheerness, Saturday, 30th, ’65.
“My dear Mr. Field,—Thanks for your cheering letter. I have great hopes in your energy and talent. I feel as if our watch had got the mainspring replaced, and had been trying to go without it for the last three months. At all events, I know nothing will be left undone that human energy can accomplish.
“With the compliments of the season, and every kind wish, in which my good wife joins me,
“I remain
“Sincerely yours,
“James Anderson.”
CHAPTER XII
THE CABLE LAID—CABLE OF 1865 GRAPPLED FOR AND RECOVERED—PAYMENT OF DEBTS
(1866)
MR. FIELD said of this crisis:
“I reached London on the 24th of December, 1865, and the next day was not a ‘Merry Christmas’ to me. But it was an inexpressible comfort to have the counsel of such men as Sir Daniel Gooch and Sir Richard A. Glass; and Mr. Brassey said, ‘Mr. Field, don’t be discouraged; go down to the company and tell them to go ahead, and whatever the cost, I will bear one-tenth of the whole.
“It was finally concluded that the best course was to organize a new company, which should assume the work; and so originated the Anglo-American Telegraph Company. It was formed by ten gentlemen who met around a table in London and put down £10,000 apiece.
“The great Telegraph Construction and Maintenance Company, undaunted by the failure of last year, answered us with a subscription of £100,000. Soon after, the books were opened to the public through the eminent banking house of J. S. Morgan & Co., and in fourteen days we had raised the whole £600,000. Then the work began again, and went on with speed. Never was greater energy infused into any enterprise. It was only the first day of March that the new company was formed, and was registered as a company the next day; and yet such were the vigor and despatch that in five months from that day the cable had been manufactured, shipped on the Great Eastern, stretched across the Atlantic, and was sending messages, literally swift as lightning, from continent to continent. The cable was manufactured at the rate of twenty miles a day.”