3i8 : The Atlantic 



strong and resistant. The early cables were subject to all kinds of 

 interruptions and accidents but in later times cables have been taken 

 up from extremely deep waters that had given more than forty years 

 of uninterrupted service and whose interiors were still almost as 

 sound and serviceable as on the day that they were first laid in the 

 darkness and silence of the ocean depths. 



The first subsurface cable was stretched across the shallow English 

 Channel from England to France in the year 1850. It broke before 

 service could be established and the next year a more successful cable 

 was laid between Dover and Calais which did get into operation. 



In the 1850's repeated attempts were made to lay a transatlantic 

 cable. On several occasions storms arose and the cable parted or the 

 end which was being laid was lost and could not be recovered. One 

 such attempt was made in 1857 but at this time the cable was appar- 

 ently too heavy and too weak to bear the strains involved in laying 

 it at great depths. At a depth of 2,000 fathoms, that is, 12,000 feet, the 

 cable parted. 



Another, and this time a partially successful attempt to complete 

 a transatlantic cable took place in 1858. Two vessels participated, 

 each carrying a part of the cable. The British ship Agamemnon sailed 

 from Valentia in Ireland at the same time that the American vessel 

 Niagara worked eastward from Heart's Content in Newfoundland. 

 This time a splice was made and the cable actually completed. A 

 number of messages were transmitted, then the signals began to fail 

 because of defective insulation. Poor business conditions and the ap- 

 proach of the Civil War postponed any further attempts to complete 

 a transatlantic cable service. 



As soon as the war was over the proponents of the transatlantic 

 cable resumed their task with renewed vigor. One of the great diffi- 

 culties was that of finding a ship that could carry out the work of 

 laying a cable. Almost any ship could be equipped with reels and 

 winches and the other devices necessary for laying or holding a cable 

 but very few vessels of that time had sufficient cargo capacity to carry 

 the great lengths of uninterrupted cable that were necessary to span 

 the ocean even at a narrow part. 



The need for a cable-laying ship was finally supplied by Brunei's 

 fabulous structure, the Great Eastern. Our chapter on the coming 

 of steam and steel supplies a brief description of this extraordinary 

 vessel and we have seen there how she failed as a passenger vessel 

 and as a carrier of ordinary cargo. Brunei's great imagination and 



