4. LAYING THE ATLANTIC CABLE

CYRUS WEST FIELD

Find answers to these questions:

1. What gave Field the idea of an Atlantic cable?
2. How were the preliminary experiments carried on?
3. What were the causes of the successive failures?
4. What main service to mankind was performed?

In 1853 an interesting scheme was brought to my attention. It was an attempt to bring to life an enterprise that had been begun and had broken down, to carry a line of telegraph to Newfoundland - including a cable across the Gulf of St. Lawrenceand at St. John's to connect with a line of steamers to Ireland, by which the time of communication might be reduced to five days.

The project did not seem to me very formidable. It was no more difficult to carry a line to St. John's on this side than to carry a line from England to some point on the Irish coast. But was this all that could be done?

Beside me in the library was a globe, which I began to turn over to study the relative positions of Newfoundland and Ireland. Suddenly the thought flashed upon me, "Why not carry the line across the Atlantic?" That was the first moment that the idea ever entered my mind. It came as a vision of the night, and never left me until, thirteen years after, the dream was fulfilled.

It is very easy to draw a line on a map or a globe, but quite difficult to measure all the distances by land and sea. As I could not undertake the enterprise alone I looked about for a few strong men to give me support.

My next door neighbor was Peter Cooper, whose name is justly held in honor for his simple noble life, and his great generosity to his native city. He had a genius for mechanics, as he showed by constructing one of the first locomotives in this country. Though an old man, he had not grown so conservative as to think that there was nothing new to be done in the world.

The first to join the enterprise, he stood by it through all its

fortunes to the end. Cooper helped me to enlist others, six in all, who made up the little company that undertook the telegraph to Newfoundland, as preliminary to the larger undertaking of crossing the ocean itself. The title of "The New York, Newfoundland and London Telegraph Company" indicated the full scope of the design.

As soon as we had organized, three of us, Mr. White, my brother, and myself, started for Newfoundland to get a charter, which we obtained after some weeks' negotiation, giving us for fifty years the exclusive right to land a submarine cable upon those shores.

Now the work began in earnest. First we built a line of telegraph four hundred miles long through an uninhabited country, cutting our way through the forests, climbing hills, plunging into swamps, and crossing rivers.

When we came to the Gulf of St. Lawrence, we had our first experience in laying a submarine cable. It was but a short line, less than a hundred miles long, and yet we failed even in that; the attempt had to be renewed the following year, when it was successful.

Of course we felt a great satisfaction that we had got so far. We had crossed the gulf, but could we cross the sea? As we stood upon the cliffs of Newfoundland and looked off upon the great deep, we saw that our greatest task was still before us.

For this we had been preparing by preliminary investigations. Before we could embark in an enterprise of which there had been no example, we must know about the ocean itself, into which we were to venture. We had sailed over it, but who knew what was under it? The cable must be on the bottom; and what sort of bottom was it? Smooth and even, or rugged as Switzerland, now sinking into deep abysses, and then rising in mountain chains over which the cable must hang suspended, to be swept to and fro by the deep undercurrents of the ocean?

Fortunately just then careful soundings by English and American navigators showed that the ocean bed was one vast plain, broader than the steppes of Siberia or the prairies of America, reaching nearly from shore to shore; and in their surprise and joy the discoverers christened it the "telegraphic plateau," so

much did it seem like a special conformation of the globe for the service of man.

Giving it that name, however, did not prove that a cable could be laid across it. The mechanical difficulty alone was enormous. Men had stretched heavy chains across rivers as booms to bar the passage of ships, but who ever dreamed of a chain over two thousand miles long? If it could be drawn out to such a length, would it not fall in pieces by its own weight? Suppose all went well, and it should hold together long enough to be got safely overboard, and to be dropped in the ooze of the ocean bed, what would it be good for?

There rose the scientific difficulty: Could an electric current be sent through it? The fact that a cable had been laid across the British Channel, so that it was possible to telegraph from Dover to Calais, was no proof that a current could be sent across the whole breadth of the Atlantic.

To get an answer to this question, we appealed to the greatest authorities in both countries. Morse said, "Yes, it can be done." So said Faraday; and when I asked the old man, "How long will it take for the current to pass from shore to shore?" he answered, "Possibly one second."

Such words of cheer put us in good heart and hope, and yet the only final and absolute test was that of experiment. And a very costly experiment it must be.

To make such a cable as we required, and to lay it at the bottom of the sea, would cost three millions of dollars! Where was all that money to come from? Who would invest in such an enterprise?

I went from city to city, addressing chambers of commerce and other financial bodies in England and the United States. All listened with respect, but such was the general incredulity that men were slow to subscribe. To show my faith by my works, I took one fourth of the whole capital myself. And so at last with the help of a few, the necessary sum was secured and the work begun.

The year 1857 saw the cable on board two ships furnished by the Governments of England and the United States; but these ships were hardly more than three hundred miles from the coast

of Ireland when the cable broke, and they had to return. So ended the first expedition.

The next year we tried again and thought we could diminish the difficulty and the danger by beginning in the middle of the Atlantic and there splicing the cable, when the two ships should sail eastward and westward until they should land the two ends on the opposite shores. This plan was carried out. They reached mid-ocean, and, splicing the cables together, the ships bore away for Ireland and Newfoundland, but had not gone a hundred miles before the cable broke. Several times we tried with the same result. Then a storm arose, in which one of the ships, the Agamemnon, came near going down, and at last all were glad to get safely back into the shelter of an English port. I went to London to attend a meeting of the Board of Directors. It was not a very cheerful meeting. On every face was a look of disappointment. Some thought that we had done everything that brave men could do, and that now it was time to stop. To make another attempt was folly and madness. So strong was this feeling that when the more resolute of us talked of renewing the attempt, the vice-president rose and left the room.

It was then that we took courage from despair. We had failed already; we could not do worse than fail again! There was a possibility of success; it was indeed a forlorn hope, but we could try.

Again the ships put to sea, but there was little enthusiasm, for there were few in either hemisphere who expected anything but a repetition of our former experience. Such was the state of the public mind when, on the 5th of August, 1858, it was suddenly flashed over the country that the Niagara had reached Newfoundland, while the Agamemnon had reached Ireland, so that the expedition was a complete success.

The revulsion of feeling was all the greater from the previous gloom, and for a few weeks everybody was wild with excitement. Then the messages grew fewer and fainter, till at last they ceased altogether. The voices of the sea were dumb.

Then came a reaction. Many felt that they had been deceived, and that no messages had ever crossed the Atlantic. Others, while admitting that there had been a few broken messages, concluded

from the sudden failure that a deep-sea cable must be subject to such interruptions that it could never be relied upon as a means of communication between the continents.

A year or two later a company was formed to construct a land line along the western coast of America, with the design that from the far northwestern coast it should be strung along from one stepping stone to another, by the Aleutian Islands, till it should come within easy distance of Siberia, the whole breadth of which must be crossed. Thus Europe might at last be reached by way of Asia!

This vast undertaking was actually begun and carried forward with great energy till it was stopped in mid-career by the success of the Atlantic Cable; but for this we had to wait seven long years. Our country was plunged in a tremendous war and had not time to think of the enterprises of peace.

In these years ocean telegraphy made great progress. We found other facilities that we had not before. The Great Eastern, which from its enormous bulk had proved too unwieldy for ordinary commerce, was the only ship afloat that could carry the heavy cable; the whole was coiled within her sides, and with the mighty burden she put to sea.

Never had there been such a prospect of success. For twelve hundred miles she rode the sea in triumph, till in a sudden. lurch of the ship the cable snapped, and once more all our hopes were

"In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.'

For one whole month we hung over the spot, trying to raise the cable, but in vain; and again we took our "melancholy way" back across the waters which had been the scene of so many failures.

This last disaster upset all our calculations. Our cable was broken and our money was gone, and we must begin all over again.

Fresh capital had to be raised to the amount of three million dollars. That single lurch of the ship cost us millions of dollars and the delay of another year.

But time brings around all things, and the next year, 1866, the Great Eastern, laden with a new burden, once more swung her mighty hulk out on the bosom of the Atlantic. For four