It was at this fête that he read this note:
“Washington, 3d July, 1857.
“My dear Sir,—Accidental circumstances which I need not detail prevented your kind letter of the 19th ultimo from being brought to my notice until this morning. I now hasten to say in reply that I shall feel myself much honored should the first message (as you propose) sent across the Atlantic by the submarine telegraph be from Queen Victoria to the President of the United States, and I need not assure you he will endeavor to answer it in a spirit and manner becoming the great occasion.
“Yours very respectfully,
“James Buchanan.
“To Cyrus W. Field, Esq.”
The following account is copied from a letter written to the London Times on August 3, 1857:
“During the progress of the Agamemnon to the Downs the mechanical appliances for regulating the delivery of the cable into the sea were kept continually in motion by the small engine on board, which is connected with them; the sheaves and gearing worked with great facility and precision, and so quietly that at a short distance from them their motion could scarcely be heard.
“The strength of the girders which carry the bearing of the entire apparatus, and which to the eye of a person unskilled in the practical working of this description of machinery may seem at first to be unduly ponderous, was found to contribute greatly to the easy motion and satisfactory steadiness of this most important agent in the success of the undertaking. So soon as the Agamemnon had passed the track of the Submarine Company’s cable between Dover and Calais in order to avoid the possibility of its being injured by the laying or hauling up of another line at right angles to it, the experiments commenced. A 13-inch shell was attached to the end of a spare coil of the Atlantic cable for the purpose of sinking it rapidly with a strain upon it to the bottom, and was then cast into the sea, drawing after it a sufficient quantity of slack to enable it to take hold of the ground, and so set the machinery in motion.
“The paying out then commenced at the rate of two, three, and four knots an hour respectively. The ship was then stopped, and the cable was hauled up from the bottom of the sea with great facility by connecting the small engine to the driving pinion geared to the sheaves. When the end was brought up to the surface it was found that the shell had broken away from the loop by which it had been fastened for the purpose of lowering it.
“The exterior coating of tar had been completely rubbed off by being drawn through the sandy bottom of the sea, and attached to the iron coating of the cable were some weeds and several small crabs which came up with it to the surface.