The Story of the Atlantic Telegraph

The electrical department was under charge of Mr. De Sauty, who had had long experience in submarine telegraphs, and who was aided by an efficient corps of assistants. Professor Thomson and Mr. Varley, as we have said, were there to examine and report for the Atlantic Company. All these gentlemen had been unceasing in their tests of the cable in every form, both while in the process of manufacture and after it was coiled in the Great Eastern. The result of their repeated tests was to demonstrate that the cable was many times more perfect than the contract required. With such marvellous delicacy did they test the current of electricity sent through it, that it was determined that of one thousand parts, over nine hundred and ninety-nine came out at the other end!

To complete this organization and equipment caused such delays as excited the impatience of all on board. But at length, when midsummer had fully come – at noon of Saturday, July fifteenth – the song of the sailors sounded the chant du départ. The Great Eastern was then lying at the Nore, and she seemed to cling to the English soil which she had griped with a huge Trotman weighing seven tons, held fast by a chain whereof every link weighed seventy pounds! To wrench this ponderous anchor from its bed required the united strength of near two hundred men. At last the bottom lets go its hold, the anchor swings to the bow, the gun is fired, and the voyage is begun. A fleet of yachts and boats raise their cheers as the mighty hull begins to move. But mark how carefully she feels her way, following the lead of yonder little steamer, the Porcupine, the same faithful guide that seven years before led the Niagara up Trinity Bay one night when the faint light of stars twinkled on all the surrounding hills. Slowly they near the sea. Now the cliffs of Dover are in sight, and bidding her escort adieu, the Great Eastern glides along by the beautiful Isle of Wight, and then quickening her speed, with a royal sweep, she moves down the Channel. Off Falmouth she picked up the Caroline, a small steamer, which had left several days before with the shore end on board. She was laboring heavily with her burden, and made little headway in the rough waves. But the Great Eastern took her in tow, and she followed like a ship's boat in the wake of the monarch of the seas.

Thus they passed round to the coast of Ireland, to that Valentia Bay where, eight years before, the Earl of Carlisle gave his benediction on the departure of the Niagara and the Agamemnon, and where, a year later, the gallant English ship brought her end of the cable safely to the shore.

The point of landing had been changed from Valentia harbor five or six miles to Foilhommerum Bay, a wild spot where huge cliffs hang over the waves that here come rolling in from the Atlantic. On the top, an old tower of the time of Cromwell tells of the bloody days of England's great civil war. It is now but a mossy ruin. Here the peasants who flocked in from the country pitched their booths on the green sward, and looked down from the dizzy heights on the boats dancing in the bay below. At the foot of the cliff, a soft, sandy beach forms a bed for the cable, and here, as it issues from the sea, it is led up a channel which had been cut for it in the rocks.

As the shore end was very massive and unwieldy, it could not be laid except in good weather; and as the sea was now rough, the Great Eastern withdrew to Bantry Bay, to be out of the way of the storms which sometimes break with fury on this rock-bound coast.

On Saturday this preliminary work was completed, the heavy shore end was carried from the deck of the Caroline across a bridge of boats to the beach, and hauled up the cliffs amid the shouts of the people. When once it was made fast to the rocks, the little steamer began to move, and the huge coil slowly unwound, and like a giant awakened, stretched out its long iron arms. By half-past ten o'clock at night the hold was empty, the whole twenty-seven miles having been safely laid, and the end buoyed in seventy-five fathoms water. A despatch was at once sent across the country to Bantry Bay to the Great Eastern to come around with all speed, and early the next morning her smoke was seen in the offing. Passing the harbor of Valentia, she proceeded to join the Caroline, which she reached about noon, and at once commenced splicing the massive shore end to her own deep-sea line. This was a work of several hours, so that it was toward evening before all was completed.

Thus, so many had been the delays of the past week, that it had come on to Sunday before the Great Eastern was ready to begin her voyage. This – which some might count a desecration of the holy day – the sailors rather accepted as a good omen. Had the shore end been laid forty-eight hours sooner, the voyage might have begun on Friday, which sailors, who are proverbially superstitious, would have thought an unlucky beginning. But Sunday, in their esteem, is a good day. They like, when a ship is moving out of sight of land, that the last sound from the shore should be the blessed Sabbath bells. If that sacred chime were not heard to-day, at least a Sabbath peace rested on sea and sky. It was a calm summer's evening. The sun was just sinking in the waves, as the Great Eastern, with the two ships of war which waited on either hand, to attend her royal progress, turned their faces to the West, and caught the sudden glory. Says Russell: "As the sun set, a broad stream of golden light was thrown across the smooth billows toward their bows, as if to indicate and illumine the path marked out by the hand of Heaven." What a sacred omen! Had it been the fleet of Columbus sailing westward, every ship's company would have fallen upon their knees on those decks, and burst forth in an Ave Maria to the gentle Mistress of the Seas. But in that manly crew there was many an eye that took in the full beauty of the scene, and many a reverent heart that invoked a benediction.

In other respects the day was well chosen. It was the twenty-third of July. From the beginning, Captain Anderson had wished to sail on the twenty-third of June, or the twenty-second of July, so as to have the full moon on the American coast. He desired also to take advantage of the westerly winds which prevail at that season, for in going against the wind the Great Eastern was steady as a rock. Every expectation was realized. To the big ship the ocean was as an inland lake. The paying-out machinery – the product of so much study and skill – worked beautifully, and as the ship increased her speed, the cable glided into the water with such ease that it seemed but a holiday affair to carry it across to yonder continent. Such were the reflections of all that evening as the long summer twilight lingered on the sea. At midnight they went to sleep, to dream of an easy triumph.

Yet be not too confident. But a few hours had passed before the booming of a gun awoke all on board with the heavy tidings of disaster. The morning breaks early in those high latitudes, and by four o'clock all were on deck, with anxious looks inquiring for the cause of alarm. The ship was lying still, as if her voyage had already come to an end, and electricians, with troubled countenances, were passing in and out of the testing-room, which, as it was always kept darkened, looked like a sick-chamber where some royal patient lay trembling between life and death.

The method used by the electricians to discover a fault is one of such delicacy and beauty as shows the marvellous perfection of the instruments which science employs to learn the secrets of nature. The galvanometer is an invention of Professor Thomson, by which "a ray of light reflected from a tiny mirror suspended to a magnet travels along a scale, and indicates the resistance to the passage of the current through the cable by the deflection of the magnet, which is marked by the course of this speck of light. If the light of the mirror travels beyond the index, or out of bounds, an escape of the current is taking place, and what is technically called a fault has occurred." Such was the discovery on Monday morning. At a quarter past three o'clock the electrician on duty saw the light suddenly glide to the end of the scale and vanish.

Fortunately it was not a fatal injury. It did not prevent signalling through the cable, and a message was at once sent back to the shore, giving notice of the check that had been received. But the electric current did not flow freely. There was a leak at some point of the line which it would not be prudent to pass over. They were now seventy-three miles from shore, having run out eighty-four miles of cable. The tests of the electricians indicated the fault to be ten or a dozen miles from the stern of the ship. The only safe course was to go back and get this on board, and cut out the defective portion. It was a most ungrateful operation thus to be undoing their own work, but there was no help for it.

Such accidents had been anticipated, and before the Great Eastern left England, she had been provided with machinery to be used in case of necessity for picking up the cable. But this proved rather an unwieldy affair. It was at the bow, and as the paying-out machine was at the stern, the ship had to be got round, and the cable, which must first be cut, had to be transferred from one end to the other. This was not an easy matter. The Great Eastern was an eighth of a mile long, and to carry the cable along her sides for this distance, and over her high wheel-houses, was an operation at once tedious and difficult.

But at length the ship's head was brought round, and the end of the cable lifted over the bow, and grasped by the pulling-in machine, and the engine began to puff with the labor of raising the cable from the depths of the ocean. Fortunately they were only in four or five hundred fathoms water, so that the strain was not great. But the engine worked poorly, and the operation was very slow. With the best they could do, it was impossible to raise more than a mile an hour! But patience and courage, though it should take all day and all night!23 The Great Eastern did her duty well, steaming slowly back toward Ireland, while the engine pulled, and the cable came up, though reluctantly, from the sea, till on Tuesday morning at seven o'clock, when they had hauled in a little over ten miles, the cause of offence was brought on board. It was found to be a small piece of wire, not longer than a needle, that by some accident (for they did not then suspect a design) had been driven through the outer cover of the cable till it touched the core. There was the source of all the mischief. It was this pin's point which pricked the vital cord, opening a minute passage through which the electricity, like a jet of blood from a pierced artery, went streaming into the sea. It was with an almost angry feeling, as if to punish it for its intrusion, that this insignificant and contemptible source of trouble was snatched from its place, the wounded piece of cable was cut off, and a splice made and the work of paying out renewed. But it was four o'clock in the afternoon of Tuesday before they were ready to resume the voyage. A full day and a half had been lost by this miserable piece of wire.

But the vexatious delay was over at last, and the stately ship, once more turning to the West, moved ahead with a steady composure, as if no petty trouble could vex her tranquil mind. Throughout the voyage the behavior of the ship was the admiration of all on board. While her consorts on either side were pitched about at the mercy of the waves, she moved forward with a grave demeanor, as if conscious of her mission, or as if eager to unburden her mighty heart, to throw overboard the great mystery that was coiled up within her, and to cast her burden on the sea.

The electricians, too, were elated, and with reason, at the perfection of the cable as demonstrated by every hour's experience. At intervals of thirty minutes, day and night, tests were passed from ship to shore, and to the delight of all, instead of finding the insulation weakened, it steadily improved as the cable was brought into contact with the cold depths of the Atlantic.

All now went well till Saturday, the twenty-ninth, when a little after noon there was again a cry from the ship, as if once more the cable were wounded and in pain. This time the fault was more serious than before. The electricians looked very grave, for they had struck "dead earth," that is, the insulation was completely destroyed, and the electric current was escaping into the sea.

As the fault had gone overboard, it was necessary to reverse their course, and haul in till the defective part was brought up from the bottom. This time it was more difficult, for they were in water two miles deep. Still the cable yielded slowly to the iron hands that drew it upward; and after working all the afternoon, about ten o'clock at night they got the fault on board. The wounded limb was at once amputated, and joining the parts that were whole, the cable was made new and strong again. Thus ended a day of anxiety. The next morning, which was the second Sabbath at sea, was welcomed with a grateful feeling after the suspense of the last twenty-four hours.

On Monday, the miles of cable that had been hauled up, and which were lying in huge piles upon the deck, were subjected to a rigid examination, to find out where the fault lay. This was soon apparent. Near the end was found a piece of wire thrust through its very heart, as if it had been driven into it. All looked black when this was discovered, for at once it excited suspicions of design. It was remarked that the same gang of workmen were in the tank as at the time of the first fault. Mr. Canning sent for the men, and showing them the cable pierced through with the wire, asked them how it occurred. Every man replied that it must have been done by design, even though they accused themselves, as this implied that there was a traitor among them. It seemed hard to believe that any one could be guilty of such devilish malignity. Yet such a thing had been done before in a cable laid in the North Sea, where the insulation was destroyed by a nail driven into it. The man was afterward arrested, and confessed that he had been hired to do it by a rival company. The matter was the subject of a long investigation in the English courts. In the present case there were many motives which might prompt to such an act. The fall in the stock on the London Exchange, caused by a loss of the cable, could hardly be less than half a million sterling. Here was a temptation such as betrays bold, bad men into crime. However, as it was impossible to fix the deed on any one, nothing was proved, and there only remained a painful suspicion of treachery. Against this it was their duty to guard. Therefore it was agreed that the gentlemen on board should take turns in keeping watch in the tank. It was very unpleasant to Mr. Canning thus to set a watch on men, many of whom had been with him in his former cable-laying expeditions, but the best of them admitted the necessity of it, and were as eager as himself to find out the Judas among them.

But accident or villainy, it was defeated this time, and the Great Eastern proudly continued her voyage. Not the slightest check interrupted their progress for the next three days, during which they passed over five hundred miles of ocean. It was now they enjoyed their greatest triumph. They were in the middle of the Atlantic, and thus far the voyage had been a complete success. The ship seemed as if made by Heaven to accomplish this great work of civilization. The paying-out apparatus was a piece of mechanism to excite the enthusiasm of an engineer, so smoothly did its well-oiled wheels run. The strain never exceeded fourteen hundred-weight, even in the greatest depths of the Atlantic. And as for the cable itself, it seemed to come as near perfection as it was possible to attain. As before, the insulation was greatly improved by submergence in the ocean. With every lengthening league it grew better and better. It seems almost beyond belief, yet the fact is fully attested that, when in the middle of the ocean, the communication was so perfect that they could tell at Valentia every time the Great Eastern rolled.24 With such omens of success, who could but feel confident? And when on Monday they passed over a deep valley, where lay "the bones of three Atlantic cables," it was with a proud assurance that they should not add another to the number.

But Wednesday brought a sudden termination of their hopes. They had run out about twelve hundred miles of cable, and were now within six hundred miles of Newfoundland. Two days more would have made them safe, as it would have brought them into the shallow waters of the coast. Thus it was when least expected that disaster came. The record of that fatal day may be given in few words. In the morning, while Mr. Field was keeping watch in the tank, with the same gang of men who had been there when the trouble occurred before, a grating sound was heard, as if a piece of wire had caught in the machinery, and word was passed up to the deck to look out for it; but the caution seems not to have been heard, and it passed over the stern of the ship. Soon after a report came from the testing-room of "another fault." It was not a bad one, since it did not prevent communication with land; and much anxiety might have been saved had a message been sent to Ireland that they were about to cut the cable, in order to haul it on board. But small as the fault was, it could not be left behind. Down on the deep sea-floor was some minute defect, a pin's point in a length measured by thousands of miles. Yet that was enough. Of this marvellous product of human skill, it might in truth be said, that it was like the law of God in demanding absolute perfection. To offend in one point was to be guilty of all.

This new fault, though it was annoying, did not create alarm, for they had been accustomed to such things, and regarded them only as the natural incidents of the voyage. Had the apparatus for pulling in been complete, it could not have delayed them more than a few hours. But this had been the weak point of the arrangements from the beginning – the bête noire of the expedition. The only motive power was a little donkey engine, (rightly named,) which puffed and wheezed as if it had the asthma. This was now put in requisition, but soon gave out for want of more steam. While waiting for this a breeze sprang up, which caused the Great Eastern to drift over the cable, by which it was badly chafed, so that when it was hauled in, as the injured part was coming over the bows and was almost within grasp, suddenly it broke and plunged into the sea!

It came without a moment's warning. So unexpected was such a catastrophe, that the gentlemen had gone down to lunch, as it was a little past the hour of noon. But Mr. Canning and Mr. Field stood watching the cable as it was straining upward from the sea, and saw the snapping of that cord, which broke so many hopes. The impression may be better imagined than described. Says a writer on board: "Suddenly Mr. Canning appeared in the saloon, and in a manner which caused every one to start in his seat, said, 'It is all over! It is gone!' then hastened onward to his cabin. Ere the thrill of surprise and pain occasioned by these words had passed away, Mr. Field came from the companion into the saloon, and said, with composure admirable under the circumstances, though his lip quivered and his cheek was blanched, 'The cable has parted and has gone overboard.' All were on deck in a moment, and there, indeed, a glance revealed the truth."

At last it had come – the calamity which all had feared, yet that seemed so far away only a few hours before. Yet there it was – the ragged end on board, torn and bleeding, the other lying far down in its ocean grave.

In America, of course, nothing could be known of the fate of the expedition till its arrival on our shores. But in England its progress was reported from day to day, and as the success up to this point had raised the hopes of all to the highest pitch, the sudden loss of communication with the ship was a heavy blow to public expectation, and gave rise to all sorts of conjectures. At first a favorite theory was, that communication had been interrupted by a magnetic storm. These are among the most mysterious phenomena of nature – so subtle and fleeting as to be almost beyond the reach of science. No visible sign do they give of their presence. No clouds darken the heavens; no thunder peals along the sky. Yet strange influences trouble the air. At this very hour, Professor Airy, the Astronomer Royal at the Observatory at Greenwich, reported a magnetic storm of unusual violence. Said a London paper:

"Just when the signals from the Great Eastern ceased, a magnetic storm of singular violence had set in. Unperceived by us, not to be seen in the heavens, nor felt in the atmosphere, the earth's electricity underwent a mysterious disturbance. The recording instruments scattered about the kingdom, everywhere testified to the fury of this voiceless tempest, and there is every reason to suppose that the confusion of signals at midday on Wednesday was due to the strange and unusual earth-currents of magnetism, sweeping wildly across the cable as it lay in apparently untroubled waters at the bottom of the Atlantic."

Said the Times:

"At Valentia, on Wednesday last, the signals, up to nine a. m., were coming with wonderful distinctness and regularity, but about that time a violent magnetic storm set in. No insulation of a submarine cable is ever so perfect as to withstand the influence of these electrical phenomena, which correspond in some particulars to storms in the ordinary atmosphere, their direction generally being from east to west. Their action is immediately communicated to all conductors of electricity, and a struggle set up between the natural current and that used artificially in sending messages. This magnetic storm affected every telegraphic station in the kingdom. At some the wires were utterly useless; and between Valentia and Killarney the natural current toward the west was so strong along the land lines that it required an addition of five times the ordinary battery power to overcome it. This magnetic storm, which ceased at two a. m. on Friday, was instantly perceptible in the Atlantic cable."

But these explanations, so consoling to anxious friends on land, did not comfort those on board the Great Eastern. They knew, alas! that the cable was at the bottom of the ocean, and the only question was, if any thing could be done to recover it.

Now began a work of which there had been no example in the annals of the sea. The intrepid Canning declared his purpose to grapple for the cable! The proposal seemed wild, dictated by the frenzy of despair. Yet he had fished in deep waters before. He had laid his hand on the bottom of the Mediterranean, but that was a shallow lake compared with the depths into which the Atlantic cable had descended. The ocean is here two and a half miles deep. It was as if an Alpine hunter stood on the summit of Mont Blanc and cast a line into the vale of Chamouni. Yet who shall put bounds to human courage? The expedition was not to be abandoned without a trial of this forlorn hope. There were on board some five miles of wire rope, intended to hold the cable in case it became necessary to cut it and lash it to the buoys, to save it from being lost in a storm. This was brought on deck for another purpose. "And now came forth the grapnels, two five-armed anchors, with flukes sharply curved and tapered to a 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." These huge grappling-irons were firmly shackled to the end of the rope, and brought to the bows and thrown overboard. One splash, and the whole has disappeared in the bosom of the ocean. Down it goes – deeper, deeper, deeper still! For two full hours it continued sinking before it struck the earth, and like a pearl-diver, began searching for its lost treasure on the bottom of the sea. What did it find there? The wrecks of ships that had gone down a hundred years ago, with dead men's bones whitening in the deep sea caves? It sought for something more precious to the interest of civilization than gems and gold.

The ship was now a dozen miles or so from the place of accident. The cable had broken a little after noon, when the sun was shining clear, so that Captains Anderson and Moriarty had just obtained a perfect observation, from which they could tell, within half a mile, the very spot where it had gone down. To reach it now, with any chance of bringing it up, it would be necessary to hook it a few miles from the end. It had been paid out in a line from east to west. To strike it broadside, the ship stood off in the afternoon a few miles to the south. Here the grapnel was thrown over about three o'clock, and struck bottom about five, when the ship began slowly drifting back on her course. All night long those iron fingers were raking the bottom of the deep but grasping nothing, till toward morning the long rope quivered like a fisherman's line when something has seized the end, and the head of the Great Eastern began to sway from her course, as if it felt some unseen attraction. As they began to haul in, the rapidly increasing strain soon rendered it certain that they had got hold of something. But what could it be? How did they know it was their lost cable? This question has often been asked. They did not see it. How did they know that it was not the skeleton of a whale, or a mast or spar, the fragment of a wrecked ship? The question is easily answered. If it had been any loose object which was being drawn up from the sea, its weight would have diminished as it came nearer the surface. But on the contrary, the strain, as shown by the dynamometer, steadily increased. This could only be from some object lying prone on the bottom. To an engineer the proof was like a mathematical demonstration. Another fact observed by Captain Anderson was equally decisive: