QooKE. — On Telegraph Cables. 331 



(Limited)," the proprietors of Hooper's core. Another com- 

 pany was formed to continue cable-communication south- 

 wards to Buenos Ayres, and a third company to continue it 

 northward from the Amazon Eiver to join the West Indian 

 Company's telegraph system. The cable for the latter com- 

 pany was also made by Hooper's. The capital for all these 

 enterprises was subscribed in England, not with altogether 

 satisfactory results to those who invested their money, the 

 twenty-pound shares of the Western and Brazilian Company 

 being now quoted at £10 15s. 



The firm that manufactured the cable for the second of 

 the above companies was unfortunate enough to lose its 

 cable-laying steamer in South American waters with a con- 

 siderable length of the cable on board. More cable was 

 manufactured, and shipped on to another steamer named the 

 " La Plata." Still more unfortunately, this vessel was also 

 wrecked by a dreadful storm in the English Channel, and all 

 on board, including a number of electricians, the officers, and 

 crew — two men only excepted — were drowned. This disaster 

 was said to be due in great measure to the steamer having on 

 deck some heavy machinery for raising the cable lost in the 

 first vessel. The saving of two of the crew of the " La 

 Plata" by a passing vessel after they had been some thirty-six 

 hours in the rigging-top exposed to the rigours of a winter 

 storm is one of the most romantic episodes in the saving of 

 life from shipwreck. 



• About the same time a smaller steamer was sent out by 

 the Hooper Company to lay about a hundred miles of the 

 shore end and intermediate parts of the cable forming the 

 northern end of the cables mentioned. The ocean is very 

 shallow near that part of South America, hence the need of a 

 great length of shore end. 



This brings me to the actual laying of the cable, in which 

 I was concerned. A week or two after the above occurrences 

 the cable steamship "Hooper" set sail from London. This 

 vessel, reckoned at the time almost the largest afloat next to 

 the " Great Eastern," was built for the Hooper Company by 

 a firm on the Tyne in the short space of ninety days. 

 Instead of a hold she was fitted with three enormous cylin- 

 drical tanks, which reached from near the keel to 1 ft. above 

 the deck. In laying ocean cables it often happens that a 

 number of vessels carry portions of a cable, to be afterwards 

 joined into one. In this case one large vessel carried about a 

 dozen lengths of cable in her three tanks. There was nearly 

 two thousand miles in all, to be laid in several different 

 places. We left the Thames on the 11th December, 1874, 

 and proceeded across the Atlantic Ocean to Cayenne. In this 

 neighbourhood, quite out of sight of land, we found a large 



