The good-fortune which favored using our ship favored us also in our commander, Captain Anderson, who was for years in the Cunard Line.
Continuing The Laying of the Atlantic Cable,
our selection from Cyrus W. Field. The selection is presented in four easy 5 minute installments.
Previously in The Laying of the Atlantic Cable.
Time: 1866
A few days after, half a dozen gentlemen joined together and bought the Great Eastern to lay the cable; and at the head of this company was placed Mr. Daniel Gooch, a member of Parliament, and chairman of the Great Western Railway, who was with us in both the expeditions which followed. His son, Mr. Charles Gooch, a volunteer in the service, worked faithfully on board the Great Eastern.
The good-fortune which favored using our ship favored us also in our commander, Captain Anderson, who was for years in the Cunard Line. How well he did his part in two expeditions the result has proved, and it was just that a mark of royal favor should fall on that manly head. Thus organized, the work of making a new Atlantic cable was begun. The core was prepared with infinite care, under the able superintendence of Mr. Chatterton and Mr. Willoughby Smith, and the whole was completed in about eight months. As fast as ready, it was taken on board the Great Eastern and coiled in three enormous tanks, and on July 15, 1865, the ship sailed.
I will not stop to tell the story of that expedition. For a week all went well; we had paid out one thousand two hundred miles of cable, and had only six hundred miles farther to go, when, hauling in the cable to remedy a fault, it parted and went to the bottom. That day I never can forget — how men paced the deck in despair, looking out on the broad sea that had swallowed up their hopes; and then how the brave Canning for nine days and nights dragged the bottom of the ocean for our lost treasure, and, though he grappled it three times, failed to bring it to the sur face. The story of that expedition, as written by Doctor Rus sell, who was on board the Great Eastern, is one of the most marvelous chapters in the whole history of modern enterprise. We returned to England defeated, yet full of resolution to begin the battle anew. Measures were at once taken to make a second cable and fit out a new expedition; and with that assurance I came home to New York in the autumn.
In December I went back again, when lo! all our hopes had sunk to nothing. The Attorney-General of England had given his written opinion that we had no legal right, without a special act of Parliament (which could not be obtained under a year), to issue the new 12 per cent. shares, on which we relied to raise our capital. This was a terrible blow. The works were at once stopped, and the money which had been paid in returned to the subscribers. Such was the state of things when I reached London on December 24, 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 to hear stout-hearted Mr. Brassey tell us to go ahead, and, if need were, he would put down sixty thousand pounds more. 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 ten thousand pounds apiece. The great Telegraph Construction and Maintenance Company, undaunted by the failure of last year, answered us with a subscription of one hundred thousand pounds. Soon after the books were opened to the public, through the eminent banking-house of J. S. Morgan and Company, and in fourteen days we had raised the six hundred thousand pounds. Then the work began again and went on with speed. Never was greater energy infused into any enterprise. It was only the last day of March that the new company was formed, and it was registered as a company the next day; and yet such was the vigor and dispatch 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.
Yet this was not “a lucky hit”—a fine run across the ocean in calm weather. It was the worst weather I ever knew at that season of the year. The dispatch that appeared in the New York papers read, “The weather has been most pleasant.” I wrote it “unpleasant.” We had fogs and storms almost the whole way. Our success was the result of the highest science combined with practical experience. Everything was perfectly organized to the minutest detail. We had on board an admirable staff of officers, such men as Halpin and Beckwith; engineers long used to this business, such as Canning and Clifford and Temple; and electricians such as Professor Thomson of Glasgow and Willoughby Smith and Laws. Mr. C. F. Varley, our companion of the year before, remained with Sir Richard Glass at Valentia, to keep watch at that end of the line, and Mr. Latimer Clark, who was to test the cable when done.
But our work was not over. After landing the cable safely at Newfoundland, we had another task—to return to mid-ocean and recover that lost in the expedition of last year. This achievement has perhaps excited more surprise than the other. Many even now “don’t understand it,” and every day I am asked “How it was done”? Well, it does seem rather difficult to fish for a jewel at the bottom of the ocean two and a half miles deep. But it is not so very difficult when you know how. You may be sure we did not go fishing at random, nor was our success mere “luck.” It was the triumph of the highest nautical and engineering skill. We had four ships, and on board of them some of the best seamen in England — men who knew the ocean as a hunter knows every trail in the forest. There was Captain Moriarty, who was in the Agamemnon in 1857-1858. He was in the Great Eastern in 1865 and saw the cable when it broke; and he and Captain Anderson at once took observations so exact that they could go right to the spot. After finding it, they marked the line of the cable by buoys; for fogs would come, and shut out sun and stars, so that no man could take an observation.
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