SUBMARINE TELEGRAPHY 231 



one accident, and their money was irretrievably lost. This view 

 had been especially advocated by Mr. Francis Gisborne with 

 great show of truth. He contended, and many approved of his 

 opinions, that it was madness to venture across a deep sea, 

 when a cable could be laid in shallow water, simply because in 

 shallow water the cable could always be repaired, whereas in deep 

 water it could not, and one fault involved the loss of the 

 whole capital embarked. This argument, if not entirely swept 

 away, is very much weakened. Deep-sea cables are no longer 

 gambling ventures, but legitimate speculations. 



Nothing can be simpler than the means by which the result 

 was attained. A grapnel or small anchor with five prongs, 

 hung to the end of a hemp and steel rope two and a half miles 

 long, was slowly dragged along the bottom of the sea across 

 the line where the cable was supposed to be. The strain on 

 the steel rope was watched ; sometimes it rose and sometimes 

 it fell, as the ship went a little quicker or slower through the 

 water, or as the prongs bit more or less deeply into the sand. 



Presently the strain rose from 42 cwt. to 80 cwt., and this 

 strain did not again decrease ; but, had the ship been allowed to 

 drift further, would have continued to increase. Surely this 

 increase of strain was due to the cable as it lay on the bottom. 

 The ship's head was allowed to come round so as to face the 

 supposed cable ; the steel rope was hauled in ; the ship brought 

 vertically over this rope. Still the strain increased, instead of 

 decreasing, even when the length of rope still out of the ship 

 could not reach to the bottom, and then those on board knew 

 that the cable hung on the grapnel. If the cable were not 

 there, the strain would decrease as the weight of steel rope hang- 

 ing to the bow decreased, but an increase of strain surely proved 

 that more and more weight was being lifted as the grapnel 

 approached the ship, and what conceivable object could pro- 

 duce this effect except the cable, of which a greater and 

 greater length was every minute being lifted from the bottom ? 

 This was the reasoning which, in 1865, proved to all on board 

 that really on more than one occasion the cable had hung 

 upon the grapnel. It is needless to say much of the failure to 

 bring the cable to the surface a failure caused by weak shackles 

 and insufficient machinery but it is quite worth while to attend 



