And below the telegram this was added:
“This feat would seem to demonstrate the entire practicability of obtaining news from the Atlantic steamers as they pass Cape Race, and should the Atlantic telegraph cable fail from any cause, we understand that the telegraph company will make effective arrangements to carry something of this kind into operation.”
CHAPTER VI
THE FIRST CABLE (CONTINUED)
(1857)
THE following cable message was sent to Mr. Field by Sir James Anderson on March 10, 1879, the twenty-fifth anniversary of “ocean telegraphy”:
“It cannot fail to gratify you, and should astonish your guests, to realize the amazing growth of your ocean child; sixty thousand miles of cable, costing about twenty million pounds sterling, having been laid since your energy initiated the first long cable. Distance has no longer anything to do with commerce. The foreign trade of all civilized nations is now becoming only an extended home trade; all the old ways of commerce are changed or changing, creating amongst all nations a common interest in the welfare of each other. To have been the pioneer par excellence in this great work should be most gratifying to yourself and your family, and no one can take from you this proud position.”
It would have seemed a strange prophecy if the above had been predicted in 1856, when it was declared that the object of the Atlantic Telegraph Company was “To continue the existing line of the New York, Newfoundland, and London Telegraph Company to Ireland, by making or causing to be made a submarine telegraph cable for the Atlantic.” At the close of the year the contracts for the manufacture of the cable were signed. Messrs. Glass, Elliott & Co. agreed to make one-half, and R. S. Newall & Co., of Liverpool, the other. Both sections were to be finished and ready to be laid on June 1, 1857, although the time fixed upon for the sailing of the fleet was to be as nearly as possible at the end of July, in accordance with the advice contained in a letter written in March, 1857:
“Perhaps it would be wise for the steamers not to join cables until after the 20th of July. I think between that time and the 10th of August the state of both sea and air is usually in the most favorable condition possible; and that is the time which my investigations indicate as the most favorable for laying down the wire. I recommend it and wish you good-luck.
Yours,
M. F. Maury.”
The English government had responded at once to the request of the Atlantic Telegraph Company, and a ship was promised with which to help lay the cable, and on Mr. Field’s return home he asked the American government for the same aid.