The Cable

by Gillian Cookson

  The peace which the Birkenhead speakers anticipated so keenly was Pax Britannica. The cable, which the Americans still saw as their idea and their venture, was undergoing a hijack by British interests. As the original Newfoundland to New York telegraph had grown into a transatlantic line, so now all the talk was of encircling the entire globe. Newall’s men were about to start work on a new Mediterranean cable, part of a projected line to India, and the further possibilities began to carry away some of the diners at the banquet. ‘This Atlantic submarine telegraph, large an undertaking as it is, is only part of a vast system which is spreading itself in every direction.’ The Indian cable, it was predicted, ‘will very soon be extended to China, to Australia, across the Pacific Ocean to California; and this country will form the centre of a system of telegraphs, whose wires will spread over the face of every great country, and under the surface of every great sea’. And here was the rub: ‘Thus, in future, when the great heart of England throbs, its pulsations will instantly reverberate to the uttermost parts of the earth.’

  It emerged, though, that the new Atlantic Telegraph Co. did not have the powers needed to take over the Newfoundland concessions and operate the telegraph away from British shores. It needed a new corporate identity. There was no precedent for this situation. The company was therefore set up and regulated by an Act of Parliament, which placed it under limited liability rules but allowed it to run the line between Britain, Ireland and Newfoundland. The government was also firm that the company’s offices must be in London.

  Many shareholders were angered by this, not least because decisions were being taken out of their hands. Some argued that it would ‘virtually place the perpetual management of officers in the hands of directors who were resident in London’. But by the time a shareholders’ meeting was called in June 1857, the Bill was already passing through Parliament. Sir William Brown, the Liverpool merchant and Member of Parliament who chaired the company, explained that the government had threatened to negotiate with another company if the Atlantic directors would not agree. Brown reminded the shareholders that four government vessels were being used, saving an estimated £100,000. The Agamemnon had been converted for cable-laying and was about to start taking the cable. There was also the promised £14,000-a-year subsidy. If the bill were delayed, there could be no attempt to lay the cable before the August gales, effectively the end of the laying season, ‘retarding operations for a considerable period’.

  Shareholders were also concerned that the government was insisting on a right to veto directors. This power was needed so that no party could take control of the company by buying up shares. The company’s solicitor, Mr Freshfield, admitted that ‘such an amount of government interference was in principle objectionable’. But shareholders had little choice but to meet the government’s demands, or ‘they would virtually ruin their undertaking’. The Act to incorporate the company was passed in July 1857.

  Instrument clerks had already been appointed at £110 and £100 per annum. Sixty men were to be engaged for paying out the cable. In the last week of June, the Niagara, adapted to take the cable in four coils, had arrived at Birkenhead. Coiling on board began, at a rate of forty-eight to fifty miles in twenty-four hours. Agamemnon, meanwhile, was in Greenwich, receiving the cable in one coil. She had been ‘jury rigged’, that is, had her heavy masts and rigging replaced by lighter spars and ropes so that she was steadier and easier to manage under steam. The ship was of an unusual design, her engines at the stern, and amidships a vast hold, 45ft square and 20ft deep, capable of holding the cable in a single coil. By mid-July, 1,100 miles were on board the Agamemnon and 900 miles on the Niagara. The collaboration between two of the largest warships in the world was seen as emblematic of a great step forward in Anglo-American relations. In New York, Harper’s Journal commented on the way that swords were being beaten to ploughshares: ‘What would Nelson and Collingwood have said of meeting a foreign first-rate in mid-ocean to lay a cable at the bottom of the sea!’

  Once the Agamemnon had received her section of cable, the ship was set out with tables for a great celebration, to which her crew and the Glass & Elliot workmen and their families were invited. Each man was given three pints of beer, used for an increasingly extravagant succession of toasts. As the vessel left the Thames, a salute was fired, and thousands lined the riverbanks at Greenwich.

  Field returned from America by the end of July, with favourable news, including a request from the New York Associated Press to enter an agreement with the company to transmit ‘intelligence’. HMS Cyclops was in the Atlantic, checking Berryman’s soundings. Maury, meanwhile, had been considering the optimum time for cable-laying by studying past weather patterns in the ocean. During the summer months, there were never gales on the western part of the route, and few or none on the eastern section, except near the coast of Ireland. In fact, meteorological records from both sides of the Atlantic showed that there had been no major storms in the preceding fifty years during June or July. The main problem in the west was fog, especially in June. Cable ships, ironically, had no way of communicating with each other except by semaphore signalling, so fog was potentially a great handicap. Fog was never a problem in winter, but any attempt at that time faced dangers from ice. August was the best month to avoid icebergs. Maury concluded that, all things considered, the weeks between 20 July and 10 August offered the best prospects for the project. So the ships were to be despatched to be ready to start work on 20 July, and if all went to plan the job could be finished in two to three weeks. In case the weather did not measure up to Maury’s predictions, there was a contingency plan. Ships in storms would often have to slip their anchor, and it was envisaged that in an Atlantic gale the cable-layers may have to slip the telegraph line itself in order to save their vessels. In that case, a special line of iron wire would be spliced to the cable, and buoyed so that the cable itself rested safely on the seabed until the storm passed. Afterwards the cable could easily be retrieved and rejoined.

  While Maury planned the laying, the directors published a paper setting out their own vision of the cable’s impact upon the world. They assumed that messages would pass at least fourteen days faster than could possibly be achieved by any other means. They dismissed the idea that the cable could be used for any warlike purpose, and in fact Morse wrote that ‘the chances of conflict and misunderstanding must be diminished in an incalculable degree’ for ‘all wars arise in ignorance and misunderstanding of the real objects and interests of the races by which they are waged’. New York would become a suburb of London, and Washington the western half of Westminster. The cable, said the company, would do more for international peace than the spending of ten millions a year on each side of the Atlantic on ‘armed Leviathans’. Communication was to resolve all problems.

  4

  Lightnings through

  Deep Waters

  On the last day of July, the two lengths of cable met for the first time, in the harbour of Queenstown, now called Cóbh, on the south coast of Ireland. They were joined together and messages were sent successfully through the whole distance, 2,500 miles, in less than a second. ‘Everything works beautifully,’ reported The Times. Some transfer of shore-end cable was required from the Agamemnon to the Niagara, as a late decision had been taken to start laying the cable in Ireland rather than mid-ocean. Bright strongly favoured the idea of starting in mid-Atlantic, as the ships could wait for good weather and then complete laying in half the time it would otherwise take. But the electricians preferred to lay from shore, as they could be in touch with land throughout the process. This appealed to some of the directors, struck by the novelty of being able to talk from London to a vessel steaming across the ocean, and Bright was overruled. So on 3 August, the ‘wire squadron’, which included HM Sounding Vessel Cyclops, HMS Leopard, and the US paddle frigate Susquehanna, steamed out of Queenstown for the island of Valentia, Europe’s most westerly port.

  John Lecky, a boy in Valentia, later recalled how the
Atlantic cable transformed his quiet home:

  In 1857 when the ships arrived we had so many visitors in the island it has always been a wonder where they got accommodation. To celebrate the laying of the cable, the Knight of Kerry gave a banquet and dance and these were held in John Driscoll’s store in the slate yard. Most fortunately there were sufficient slabs ready to lay down for the floor and others for the dinner table.

  This event was described in The Times as ‘an elegant déjeuner’. Amidst the odd surroundings, spirits were high. The Lord Lieutenant of Ireland summed up the general view:

  We are about to establish a new material link between the old world and the new. Moral links there have been – links of race, links of commerce, links of friendship, links of literature, links of glory – but this, our new link, instead of superseding and supplanting the old ones, is to give a life and an intensity which they never had before.

  The cable was brought ashore, and signals successfully sent from the beach through the full length of the Agamemnon’s cable. The following day, the fleet set off on its course of 1,834 miles to Trinity Bay, Newfoundland. Valentia was the closest point in the British Isles to the New World, and her sandy coves with deep water provided ideal conditions in which to land a cable. The ships would carry a surplus of 600 miles of line so that even if there were deviation from the planned course, there was no danger that it would run out. Although Newall was still raging in the letters columns of The Times for being blamed for ‘a most egregious blunder’, the mistake over the cable’s thread was not a fatal one. In the event the two sections were spliced without much difficulty. Charles Bright, the engineer in charge of the expedition, ensured that sections of cable from both suppliers were laid at an early stage, to prove that they could easily be joined at sea, and to show that the misunderstanding had not caused huge difficulty. All seemed on course for success.

  Sketches of the Cyclops (top) and the Niagara by E.W. Cooke. (Institution of Engineering and Technology)

  Sketch of the Leopard by E.W. Cooke. (Institution of Engineering and Technology)

  The expedition left Valentia on 7 August, laying shore-end cable from the Niagara, following the course of the Cyclops, which was taking soundings. The Agamemnon was to follow, and would take over the laying in mid-ocean once the Niagara’s cable was spent. Eight miles out, the shore end was spliced to the main cable. By noon the following day, forty miles had been laid. Four hours later, as the water deepened, a brake had to be placed on the cable so that the speed at which it left the ship was roughly the same as the forward movement of the vessel. Until that point, the laying had been regulated by the action of the machinery against the ship’s forward motion. The brake, made by friction drums against paying-out sheaves, was gradually increased through the night, depending on the speed of the Niagara and the depth reported by the Cyclops. The following evening, when about 180 miles had been laid, the cautious Bright, happy that the men and machinery were ‘well at work’, allowed the ship’s speed to increase from three or four knots, to five. Early in the morning of 10 August, the ocean’s depth increased rapidly, from 550 fathoms to 1,750 in a distance of eight miles. ‘Up to this time’, reported Bright:

  seven hundredweight strain sufficed to keep the rate of the cable near enough to that of the ship, but as the water deepened the proportionate speed of the cable advanced, and it was necessary to augment the pressure by degrees, until, in the depth of 1,700 fathoms, the indicator showed a strain of 15 hundredweight [three quarters of a ton] while the cable and ship were running five and a half and five knots respectively.

  By noon, with the vessel 214 miles from shore, and having laid 255 miles of cable, there was an increasing swell and a strong breeze. Morse, who held a watching brief for the US government, ‘had to retire to his berth as soon as the elements asserted themselves, and was scarcely visible again till all was over’.

  After this, with the depth approaching 2,000 fathoms, about two miles, the strain had to be increased to a ton. ‘At six in the evening’, said Bright, ‘some difficulty arose through the cable getting out of the sheaves of the paying-out machine, owing to the tar and pitch hardening in the grooves, and a splice of large dimensions passing over them.’ Bright managed to retrieve the situation by fitting extra guards to the machine, and removing the congealed tar with oil. While this work was in progress, laying had to be halted, the cable temporarily held by stoppers until it could be re-attached to its pulleys. Bright considered this to be a significant achievement, ‘showing that it is possible to lay in deep waters without continuing to lay out cable – a point upon which doubts have been frequently expressed’. This had been an anxiety beforehand, as the ‘vast strength and grip of machinery’ needed to support the weight of cable at depth had caused problems in the Mediterranean.

  But then the cable started to run away at a speed much faster than that of the ship. The vessel had slowed to three knots, but the cable was leaving at five and a half or more. The wind and sea meanwhile increased their force, and the task was complicated by a current which carried the cable at an angle from the ship’s course. The brake, or retarding force, had to be increased to 25, then 30, and finally 35 hundredweight, or one and three quarter tons, as the cable issued forth at a speed ‘more than it would have been prudent to permit’.

  The cable’s progress was slowed to five knots, when in the early hours of 11 August, with 335 miles laid and in 2,000 fathoms, it snapped. Bright, who had been attending to the brakes himself, was sure that matters were under control and briefly left the scene to check the speed of the ship and to see how the cable was emerging from the hold. In the moments he was away, the machine was left in the charge of an experienced mechanic, one who ‘had been from the first engaged in its construction and fitting’. This man, though, failed to release the brakes to compensate for the ship’s descent in the swell. Bright was moving forward on the ship when he heard the machine stop. ‘I immediately called out to ease the brake and reverse the engine of the ship, but when I reached the spot the cable was broken.’ He later blamed the exhaustion of his men for the mistake:

  When the rate of the wheels grew slower as the ship dropped her stern in the swell, the brake should have been eased; this had been done regularly before whenever an unusually sudden descent of the ship temporarily withdrew the pressure from the cable in the sea, but owing to our entering the deep water the previous morning, and having all hands ready for any emergency that might occur there, the chief part of my staff had been compelled to give in at night through sheer exhaustion, and hence been short-handed. I was obliged for the time to leave the machine, without, as it proves, sufficient intelligence to control it.

  Bright would not criticise the machinery itself. ‘It has been suggested as a cause of the failure that the machinery is too massive and ponderous; my experience of its action teaches otherwise. For three days in shallow and deep water as well as in rapid transition from one to the other nothing could be more perfect than its working’. He argued that, since the machinery had worked well in shallower water ‘where the weight of the cable had less ability to overcome its friction and resistance’, it could not be too heavy for deep water where extra friction had to be introduced to restrain the cable’s rapid passage from the ship. He suggested some slight improvements to the brakes, though expressing complete confidence in the machinery as it stood. ‘It must be remembered as a test of the work which it has done, that unfortunate as this termination to the expedition is, the longest length of cable ever laid has been paid out by it, and that in the deepest water yet passed over.’

  The newspapers were told on 12 August that ‘an accident of some description’ had occurred. Wildman Whitehouse, who had stayed on shore as his health was not good, was in the temporary telegraph station set up in a hut and tents on Valentia beach. He received constant signals and messages until the cable’s failure, and could tell from his tests that the problem was 350 to 400 miles off shore. ‘In the absence of any means of commun
icating with the ships, it is of course impossible even to guess at the cause of this embarrassment.’ But there were hopes that the cable could be hauled in and repaired. ‘With a view to this possibility, signals of great energy are now being constantly sent from this station through the cable, but no answer has at present been received.’ Two days later, the Cyclops steamed into Valentia to confirm the worst, carrying letters from Field announcing that cable-laying had been abandoned, at least for a time. The season was late, there was little hope of recovering the lost cable, and there was not enough line remaining to complete the distance without it.

  So only two weeks after the flotilla had set out with such confidence, the Atlantic directors faced the ignominy of an approach from the Red Sea Co., which wanted to buy the unused cable. This offer was considered, although Bright believed the lost cable could be retrieved at a relatively low cost and the whole re-laid the following summer.