230 APPLIED SCIENCE 



during that time. The only time which can be safely saved is the 

 time between the occurrence of the fault and the alarm ; and, 

 secondly, between the detection of the fault and the decision 

 of the electrician as to its probable nature and position. The 

 arrangements of 1866, in both these respects, were greatly in 

 advance of all that had been previously attempted. 



By far the most remarkable recent achievement in submarine 

 engineering was the recovery of the 1865 Atlantic Cable from 

 a depth of two miles. Cables obviously could be laid in deep 

 as in shallow water this was a mere question of mechanical 

 arrangement but very few persons possessed an imagination 

 sufficiently hardy to allow them even to conceive the possibility 

 of recovering a rope which had sunk to the bottom of the At- 

 lantic Ocean. It is not true, as is now frequently asserted, that 

 no one but those engaged in the expedition had any hope of 

 success ; for so soon as it appeared from the attempts made in 

 1865 that the cable could be hooked, Mr. Henley, Mr. Fleeming 

 Jenkin, and a little later Mr. Latimer Clark, publicly expressed 

 their conviction of the pi'obable success of the undertaking ; but 

 it is certain that the public, and some even of the directors of 

 the companies concerned, entirely disbelieved in the possibility 

 of success, and put no faith in the assurances given, that the 

 cable really had been found in 1865. Success had attended 

 similar attempts in considerable depths this was known to 

 engineers and calculation showed that what had been done 

 in 600 fathoms by Mr. Henley was possible in 2,000 fathoms. 

 Still the greatest credit must be given to Mr. Canning, now 

 Sir Samuel Canning, for his courage in making the attempt in 

 1865. Few men would have had the nerve to begin an ap- 

 parently hopeless search at the very moment of failure in a 

 great but comparatively simple undertaking. The admiration 

 is due not so much to the means adopted either then or in 

 1866 they were simple enough but to the resolution which 

 prompted the attempt at a moment of great depression. The 

 result will have, or ought to have, a greater effect in pro- 

 moting the establishment of deep-sea cables than the suc- 

 cessful submersion of a dozen cables across the Atlantic. It 

 had been thought and said that men sharing the risk of a deep- 

 sea cable were embarked in a desperate or gambling venture ; 



