The Atlantic Cable

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Dec 18, 1866

The Atlantic Cable.

Interesting Particulars.

The following is the speech of Mr. Cyrus W. Field, the projector of the Atlantic Telegraph, delivered at the recent banquet given to him in New York on the completion of his great enterprise. The particulars here stated concerning this last most notable achievement of our times, are worthy of being read and remembered by all; and the reader can but be interested in the thrilling descriptions with which the remarks of Mr. Field abound.

Speech of Mr. Field.—After returning thanks for the complimentary manner in which he was received, and alluding to several of the original projectors and co-laborers in the enterprise who have now passed away, Mr. Field proceeded to speak of the

First Inception of the Atlantic Telegraph.—It is nearly thirteen years since half-a-dozen gentlemen of this city met at my house for four successive evenings, and around a table covered with maps and charts, and plans and estimates, considered a project to extend a line of telegraph from Nova Scotia to St. Johns, in Newfoundland, thence to be carried across the ocean. It was a very pretty plan on paper. There was New York, and there was St. Johns, only about 1,200 miles apart. It was easy to draw a line from one point to the other—making no account of the forests and mountains, and swamps and rivers and gulfs, that lay in our way. Not one of us had ever seen the country, or had any idea of the obstacles to be overcome. We thought we could build the line in a few months. It took two years and a half. Yet we never asked for help outside our own little circle. Indeed I fear that we should not have got it if we had—for few had any faith in our scheme. Every dollar came out of our own pockets. Yet I am proud to say no man drew back. No man proved a deserter; those who came first into the work have stood by it to the end. Of those six men four are here to-night—Mr. Peter Cooper, Moses Taylor, Marshall O. Roberts, and myself. My brother Dudley is in Europe, and Mr. Chandler White died in 1856, and his place was supplied by Mr. Wilson G. Hunt, who is also here. Mr. Robert W. Lowber was our Secretary.

From this statement you perceive that in the beginning this was wholly an American enterprise. It was begun, and for two years and a half was carried on solely by American capital. Our brethren across the sea did not even know what we were doing away in the forests of Newfoundland. Our little company raised and expended over a million and a quarter of dollars before an Englishman paid a single pound sterling. Our only support outside was in the liberal character and steady friendship of the Government of Newfoundland, for which we were greatly indebted to Mr. E. M. Archibald, then Attorney-General of that colony, and now British consul at New York. And in preparing for an ocean cable the first soundings across the Atlantic were made by American officers in American ships. Our scientific men—Morse, Henry, Bache, and Maury—had taken great interest in the subject. The U. S. ship Dolphin discovered the telegraphic plateau as early as 1853; and the U. S. ship Arctic sounded across from Newfoundland to Ireland in 1856, a year before H. M.'s ship Cyclops, under command of Capt. Dayman, went over the same course.

The Enterprise in England.—It was not till 1856—ten years ago—that the enterprise had any existence in England. In that summer I went to London, and there with Mr. John W. Brett, Mr. (now Sir) Chas. Bright, and Dr. Whitehouse, organized the Atlantic Telegraph Company. Then for the first time was enlisted the support of English capitalists; and then the British Government began that generous course which has continued ever since—offering us ships to complete soundings across the Atlantic, and to assist in laying the cable, and an annual subsidy for the transmission of messages. The expedition of 1857 and the two expeditions of 1858 were joint enterprises, in which the Niagara and the Susquehanna took part with the Agamemnon, the Leopard, the Gordon, and the Valorous; and the officers of both navies worked with generous rivalry for the same great object. The capital—except one quarter which was taken by myself—was subscribed wholly in Great Britain. The directors were almost all English bankers and merchants, though among them was one gentleman whom we are proud to call an American—Mr. George Peabody.

The Early Failures.—With the history of the expeditions of 1857-8 you are familiar. On the third trial we gained a brief success. The cable was laid, and for four weeks it worked—though not very brilliantly—never giving forth such rapid and distinct flashes as the cables of to-day. It spoke, though only in broken sentences. But while it lasted no less than four hundred messages were sent across the Atlantic.

After the failure of 1858 came our darkest days. When a thing is dead, it is hard to galvanize it into life. Other causes delayed a new attempt. This country had become involved in a tremendous war; and while the nation was struggling for life, it had no time to spend in foreign enterprises. But in England the project was still kept alive. The Atlantic Telegraph Company kept up its organization. It had a noble body of directors, who had faith in the enterprise, and looked beyond its present low estate to ultimate success.

All this time the science of submarine telegraphy was making progress. The British government appointed a Commission to investigate the whole subject. It was composed of eminent scientific men and practical engineers. This Commission sat for nearly two years and spent many thousands of pounds in experiments. The result was a clear conviction in every mind that it was possible to lay a telegraph across the Atlantic. Science was also being all the while applied to practice. Submarine cables were laid in different seas—in the Mediterranean, in the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf.

The Effort of 1865—the Gigantic Efforts made.—When the scientific and engineering problems were solved, we took heart again and began to prepare for a fresh attempt. This was in 1865. In this country—though the war was still raging—I went from city to city, holding meetings and trying to raise capital, but with poor success. Men came and listened, and said “it was all very fine,” and “hoped I would succeed,” but did nothing. In one of the cities they gave me a large meeting, and passed some beautiful resolutions, and appointed a committee of “solid men” to canvass the city, but I did not get a solitary subscriber! In this city I did better, though money came by the hardest. By personal solicitations, encouraged by you, sir, and other good friends, I succeeded in raising £70,000. Since not many had faith, I must present one example to the contrary, though it was not till a year later. When almost all deemed it a hopeless scheme, one gentleman came to me and purchased stock of the Atlantic Telegraph Company to the amount of £100,000. That was Mr. Loring Andrews, who is here this evening, to see his faith rewarded. But at that time I speak of, it was plain that our main hope must be in England, and I went to London. There, too, it dragged heavily. There was a profound discouragement. Many had lost before, and were not willing to throw more money into the sea. We needed £600,000, and with our utmost efforts we had raised less than half, and there the enterprise stood in a dead lock. It was plain that we must have help from some new quarter. I looked around to find a man who had broad shoulders, and could carry a heavy load, and who would be a giant in the cause. It was at this time I was introduced to a gentleman whom I would hold up to the American public as a specimen of a great-hearted Englishman, Mr. Thomas Brassey. You may never have heard his name, but in London he is known as one of the men who has made British enterprise and British capital felt in all parts of the earth. I went to see him, though with fear and trembling. He received me kindly, but put me through such an examination as I never had before. I thought I was in the witness-box. He asked me every possible question, but my answers satisfied him, and he ended by saying it was an enterprise which ought to be carried out, and that he ought to be one of ten men to furnish the money to do it. This was a pledge of £60,000 sterling! Encouraged by this noble offer, I looked around to find another such man, though it was almost like trying to find two Wellingtons. But he was found in Mr. John Pender, of Manchester. I went to his office one day in London, and we walked together to the House of Commons, and before we got there he said he would take an equal share with Mr. Brassey.

The action of these two gentlemen was a turning point in the history of our enterprise; for it led shortly after to a union of the well-known firm of Glass, Elliot & Co. with the Gutta Percha Company, making of the two one grand concern known as “The Telegraph Construction and Maintenance Company,” which included not only Mr. Brassey and Mr. Pender, but other men of great wealth, such as Mr. George Elliot and Mr. Barclay, of London, and which, thus reinforced with immense capital, took up the whole enterprise in its strong arms. We needed, I have said, £600,000, and with all our efforts in England and America we raised only £285,000. This new company now came forward, and offered to take the whole remaining £315,000, besides £100,000 of the bonds, and to make its own profits contingent on success.

The Delicacy of the Cable.—Our two cables do their part well. There are no way stations between Ireland and Newfoundland, where messages have to be repeated, and the lightning never lingers more than a second in the bottom of the sea. To those who feared that they might be used up or wear out, I would say, for their relief, that the old cable works a little better than the new one, but that is because it has been down longer, as time improves the quality of gutta percha. But the new one is constantly growing better. To show how delicate are these wonderful cords, it is enough to state that they can be worked with the smallest battery power. When the first cable was laid in 1858, electricians thought that to send a current 2,000 miles, it must be almost like a stroke of lightning. But God was not in the earthquake, but in the still, small voice. The other day Mr. Latimer Clark telegraphed from Ireland across the ocean and back again, with a battery formed in a lady’s thimble! And now Mr. Collett writes me from Heart’s Content: “I have just sent my compliments to Dr. Gould, of Cambridge, who is at Valentia, with a battery composed of a gun-cap, with a strip of zinc, excited by a drop of water, the simple bulk of a tear!” A telegraph that we think nearly perfect. It has never failed for an hour or a minute.

Recovery of the Old Cable.—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. Well, it does seem rather difficult to fish for a jewel at the bottom of the ocean two and a half miles deep. But this is not so very difficult—when you know how. You may be sure we did not go a-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 Capt. Moriarty, who was in the Agamemnon in 1857-8. He was in the Great Eastern last year, and saw the cable when it broke, and he said Capt. Anderson at once took their observations so exact that they could go right to the spot. After finding it, they marked the line of the cable by a row of buoys; for fogs would come down, and shut out sun and stars, so that no man could take an observation. These buoys were anchored a few miles apart. They were numbered, and each had a flagstaff on it so that it could be seen by day; and a lantern by night. Thus having taken our bearings, we stood off three or four miles, so as to come broadside on, and then casting over the grapnel drifted slowly down upon it, dragging the bottom of the ocean as we went. At first it was a little awkward to fish in such deep water, but our men got used to it, and soon could cast a grapnel almost as straight as an old whaler throws a harpoon. Our fishing line was of formidable size. It was made of rope, twisted with wires of steel, so as to bear a strain of thirty tons. It took about two hours for the grapnel to reach the bottom, but we could tell when it struck. I often went to the bow, and sat on the rope, and could feel by the quiver that the grapnel was dragging on the bottom two miles under us. But it was very slow business. We had storms and calms, and fogs and squalls. Still we worked on day after day. Once, on the 17th of August, we got the cable up, and had it in full sight for five minutes, a long, slimy monster, fresh from the core of the ocean’s bed, but our men began to cheer so wildly that it seemed to be frightened, and suddenly broke away, and went down into the sea. This accident kept us at work two weeks longer, but finally on the last night of August we caught it. We had cast the grapnel thirty times. It was a little before midnight on Friday night that we hooked the cable, and it was a little after midnight Sunday morning when we got it on board. What was the anxiety of those twenty-six hours? The strain on every man’s life was like the strain on the cable itself. When finally it appeared, it was midnight; the lights of the ship, and in the boats around our bows, as they flashed in the faces of the men, showed them eagerly watching for the cable to appear on the water. All who were allowed to approach crowded forward to see it. Yet not a word was spoken, only the voices of the officers in command were heard giving orders. All felt as if life and death hung on the issue. It was only when it was brought over the bow and on to the deck that men dared to breathe. Even then they hardly believed their eyes. Some crept toward it to feel of it, to be sure it was there. Then we carried it to the electricians’ room, to see if our long sought-for treasure was alive or dead. A few minutes of suspense, and a flash told of the lightning current again set free. Then did the feeling long pent up burst forth. Some turned away their heads and wept. Others broke into cheers, and the cry ran from man to man, and was heard down the engine-rooms, deck below deck, and from the boats on the water, and the other ships, while rockets lighted up the darkness of the sea. Then with thankful hearts we turned our faces again to the west. But soon the wind rose, and for thirty-six hours we were exposed to all the dangers of a storm on the Atlantic. Yet in the very height and fury of the gale, as I sat in the electricians’ room, a flash of light came up from the deep, which having crossed to Ireland, came back to me in mid-ocean, telling that those so dear to me, whom I had left on the banks of the Hudson, were well and were following us with their wishes and their prayers. This was like a whisper of God from the sea, bidding me keep heart and hope. The Great Eastern bore herself proudly through the storm, as if she knew that the vital cord, which was to join two hemispheres, hung at her stern; and so, on Saturday, the 7th of September, we brought our second cable safely to the shore.

Personal Experience.—Such, gentlemen, in brief, is the story of the telegraph which you have wished to hear. It has been a long, hard struggle. Nearly thirteen years of anxious watching and ceaseless toil. Often my heart has been ready to sink. Many times, when wandering in the forests of Newfoundland, in the pelting rain, or on the deck of ships, on dark, stormy nights—alone, far from home—I have almost accused myself of madness and folly to sacrifice the peace of my family, and all the hopes of life, for what might prove, after all, but a dream. I have seen my companions, one and another, falling by my side, and feared that I too might not live to see the end. And yet one hope has led me on, and I have prayed that I might not taste of death till this work was accomplished. That prayer is answered; and now, beyond all acknowledgments to men, is the feeling of gratitude to Almighty God.