The Story of the Atlantic Telegraph Part 16

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 pa.s.sed from ship to sh.o.r.e, 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 Sat.u.r.day, 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 pa.s.sed 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.[C] With such omens of success, who could but feel confident? And when on Monday they pa.s.sed over a deep valley, where lay "the bones of three Atlantic cables," it was with a proud a.s.surance 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 pa.s.sed up to the deck to look out for it; but the caution seems not to have been heard, and it pa.s.sed 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 G.o.d 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 _bete 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 pa.s.sed away, Mr. Field came from the companion into the saloon, and said, with composure admirable under the circ.u.mstances, 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 sh.o.r.es. 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 p.r.o.ne on the bottom. To an engineer the proof was like a mathematical demonstration. Another fact observed by Captain Anderson was equally decisive:

"The grapnel had caught something at the exact hour when by calculation the ship was known to be crossing the line of the cable; nor had the grapnel upon this or any other occasion even for an instant caught any impediment from the time of its being lowered to the bottom, until the hour indicated by calculation, when the cable ought to be hooked."

Having thus caught the cable, they had good hopes of getting it again, their confidence increasing with every hundred fathoms brought on board.

For hours the work went on. They had raised it seven hundred fathoms--or three quarters of a mile--from the bottom, when an iron swivel gave way, and the cable once more fell back into the sea, carrying with it nearly two miles of rope.

The first attempt had failed, but the fact that they had unmistakably caught the prize gave them courage for a second. Preparations were at once begun, but fogs came on and delayed the attempt till Monday, when it was repeated. The grapnel caught again. It was late in the afternoon when it got its hold, and the work of pulling in was kept up all night.

But as the sea was calm and the moon shining brightly, all joined in it with spirit, feeling elated with the hope of triumph on the morrow.

That was not to be; but each attempt seemed to come nearer and nearer to victory. This time the cable was drawn up a full mile from the bottom, and hung suspended a mile and a half below the ship. Had the rope been strong enough, it might have been brought on board. But again a swivel gave way, and the cable, whose sleep had been a second time disturbed, sought its ocean bed.

These experiments were fast using up the wire rope, and every expedient had to be resorted to, to piece it out and to give it strength. Each shackle and swivel was replaced by new bolts, and the capstan was increased four feet in diameter, by being belted with enormous plates of iron, to wind the rope around it, if the picking-up machinery should fail. This gave full work to all the mechanics on board. The ship was turned into a very cave of Vulcan, presenting at night a scene which might well take the eye of an artist, and which Russell thus describes:

"The forge fires glared on her decks, and there, out in the midst of the Atlantic, anvils rang and sparks flew; and the spectator thought of some village far away, where the blacksmith worked, unvexed by cable anxieties and greed of speedy news. As the blaze shot up, ruddy, mellow and strong, and flung arms of light aloft and along the glistening decks, and then died into a red centre, masts, spars, and ropes were for the instant touched with a golden gleaming, and strange figures and faces were called out from the darkness--vanished, glinted out again--rushed suddenly into foreground of bright pictures, which faded soon away--flickered--went out--as they were called to life by its warm breath, or were buried in the outer darkness! Outside all was obscurity, but now and then vast shadows, which moved across the arc of the lighted fog-bank, were projected far away by the flare; and one might well pardon the pa.s.sing mariner, whose bark drifted him in the night across the track of the great ship, if, crossing himself, and praying with shuddering lips, he fancied he beheld a phantom ship freighted with an evil crew, and ever after told how he had seen the workshops of the Inferno floating on the bosom of the ocean."

While preparing for a third attempt, the ship had been drifting about, sometimes to a distance of thirty or forty miles, but it had marked the course where the cable lay by two buoys, thrown over about ten miles apart, each bearing a flag which might be seen at a distance, and so easily came back to the spot. On Thursday morning all was ready, and the line was cast as before, but after some hours of drifting, it was evident that the ship had pa.s.sed over the cable without grappling. The line was hauled in, and the reason at once appeared. One of the flukes had caught in the chain, so that it could not strike its teeth into the bottom. This was cleared away, and the rope prepared for a fourth and final attempt.

It was at noon of Friday that the grapnel went overboard for the last time. By four o'clock it had caught, and the work of hauling-in recommenced. Again the cable was brought up nearly eight hundred fathoms, when the rope broke, carrying down two miles of its own length, and with it the hopes of the Atlantic Telegraph for the present year.

Their resources were exhausted. For nine days and nights, for the work never stopped for light or darkness, had the great ship kept moving round and round like some mighty bird of the sea, with her eye fixed on the place where her treasure had gone down, and striving to wrest it from the hand of the spoiler. Three times had they grasped the prize, and each time failed to recover it, only for want of ropes strong enough to bring it on board. _The cable itself never broke._ This proof of its strength was a good omen for future success.

But for the present all was over. The attempt must be abandoned for the year 1865, but not for ever; and with this purpose in her constant mind, the Great Eastern swung sullenly around, and turned her imperial head toward England, like a warrior retiring from the field--not victorious, nor yet defeated and despairing, but with her battle-flag still flying, and resolved once more to attempt the conquest of the sea.

FOOTNOTES:

[A] Nearly a year and a half after this, when the cable was safely landed in Newfoundland, Captain Anderson, still on board the Great Eastern, in a letter to a friend, thus referred to his first connection with the Atlantic Telegraph:--

"I cannot tell you how I have felt since our success. It is only seventeen months since I first walked up to the top of the paddle-box of this ship at Sheerness, upon a dark, rainy night--reviewed my past career in my mind, and tried to look into the future, to see what I had undertaken, and realize if possible what this new step would develop. I cannot say I believed much in cables; I rather think I did not; but I did believe Mr. Field was an earnest man, of great force of character, and working under a strong conviction that what he was attempting was thoroughly practicable; and I knew enough of the names with which he had a.s.sociated himself in the enterprise to feel that it was a real, true, honest effort, worthy of all the energy and application of one's manhood; and come what might in the future, I resolved to do my very utmost, and to do nothing else until it was over. More completely however than my resolve foreshadowed, I dropped inch by inch, or step by step, into the work, until I had no mind, no soul, no sleep, that was not tinged with cable. In a word I accuse Mr. Field of having dragged me into a vortex, that I could not get out of, and did not wish to try--and the sum total of all this is, to lay a thread across an ocean! Dr.

Russell compared it to an elephant stretching a cobweb, and there lay its very danger: the more you multiply the mechanism, the more you increase the risk."

[B] "All during the night the process of picking up was carefully carried on, the Big Ship behaving beautifully, and hanging lightly over the cable, as if fearful of breaking the slender cord which swayed up and down in the ocean. Indeed, so delicately did she answer her helm, and coil in the film of thread-like cable over her bows, that she put one in mind of an elephant taking up a straw in its proboscis."--Russell.

[C] So exquisitely sensitive was the copper strand, that as the Great Eastern rolled, and so made the cable pa.s.s across the magnetic meridian, the induced current of electricity, incomprehensibly faint as it must have been, produced nevertheless a perceptible deviation of the ray of light on the mirror galvanometer at Foilhommerum.--_London Times._

CHAPTER XV.

PREPARING TO RENEW THE BATTLE.

The expedition of 1865, though not an immediate success, had the moral effect of a victory, as it confirmed the most sanguine expectations of all who embarked in it. The great experiment made during those four weeks at sea, had demonstrated many points which were most important elements in the problem of Ocean Telegraphy. These are summed up in the following paper, which was signed by persons officially engaged on board the Great Eastern:

1. It was proved by the expedition of 1858, that a Submarine Telegraph Cable could be laid between Ireland and Newfoundland, and messages transmitted through the same.

By the expedition of 1865 it has been fully demonstrated:

2. That the insulation of a cable improves very much after its submersion in the cold deep water of the Atlantic, and that its conducting power is considerably increased thereby.

3. That the steamship Great Eastern, from her size and constant steadiness, and from the control over her afforded by the joint use of paddles and screw, renders it safe to lay an Atlantic Cable in any weather.

4. That in a depth of over two miles four attempts were made to grapple the cable. In three of them the cable was caught by the grapnel, and in the other the grapnel was fouled by the chain attached to it.

5. That the paying-out machinery used on board the Great Eastern worked perfectly, and can be confidently relied on for laying cables across the Atlantic.

6. That with the improved telegraphic instruments for long submarine lines, a speed of more than eight words per minute can be obtained through such a cable as the present Atlantic between Ireland and Newfoundland, as the amount of slack actually paid out did not exceed fourteen per cent, which would have made the total cable laid between Valentia and Heart's Content nineteen hundred miles.

7. That the present Atlantic Cable, though capable of bearing a strain of seven tons, did not experience more than fourteen hundred-weight in being paid out into the deepest water of the Atlantic between Ireland and Newfoundland.