THE ATLANTIC CABLE. 99 



While to this energetic man is due the actual success, it is to Professor Morse, who had 

 aid that " telegraphic communication might with certainty be established across the Atlantic 

 Ocean/' and to an excellent Roman Catholic bishop, that the idea is to be fairly credited. 

 Bishop Mullock, of Newfoundland, while lying becalmed in his yacht off Cape North, the 

 extreme point of the province of Cape Breton, bethought himself how his poor neglected 

 island might reap some advantage from being taken into the track of communication between 

 Europe and America, for he saw that Nature had provided an easy approach to the main- 

 land for a cable. Fired with the idea, he wrote to one of the St. John's papers, and his 

 letter is to-day a model of lucid explanation. About the same time Mr. Frederick N. Gisborne, 

 a practical telegraph operator, promulgated the idea of connecting St. John's with the main- 

 land, and one evening interested Mr. Cyrus Field, then just retired from business on a com- 

 petency, in his scheme. " After he left," writes his brother, " Mr. Field took the globe which 

 was standing in the library, and began to turn it over. It was while thus studying the globe 

 that the idea first occurred to him that the telegraph might be carried further still, and be 

 made to span the Atlantic Ocean." Maury, the distinguished marine scientist, and Professor 

 Morse, had also come to the same conclusion, and at about the same time as had others in 

 England. The history of the financial difficulties and ultimate triumphs connected Avith the 

 inauguration of the first cable would not interest the reader; suffice it to say that half-a-dozen 

 New York millionaires subscribed the first capital a million and a half dollars. The cable 

 across the Gulf of St. Lawrence was successfully laid in 1856, after one previous failure. 



And now Field began to clear the way by consulting the highest scientific authorities 

 on both sides of the Atlantic. Was it possible to carry a cable across the ocean? If laid, would 

 it be able to convey messages ? The first query related to mechanical difficulties only, such 

 as the depth of the ocean, the nature of the ocean bed, the influence of currents and winds. 

 The second referred to pure science and the conditions under which the electric fluid acts 

 Would the lightning flash from shore to shore across an intervening waste of sea ? The 

 answer to the first question was supplied by Maury, who pointed out that between Ireland 

 and Newfoundland the bottom of the sea formed a plateau, or elevated table-land, which, as 

 he said, seemed to have been placed there especially for the purpose of supporting the wires 

 -of an electric telegraph, and protecting them from injury. Its slope, he said, was quite 

 regular, gradually increasing from the shores of Newfoundland to the depth of from 1,500 

 to 2,000 fathoms as you approach the Irish coast. It was neither too deep nor too shallow : 

 deep enough to protect the cable from danger by ships' anchors, icebergs, and currents; 

 ;shallow enough to secure that the wires should be readily lodged upon the bottom. From 

 Professor Morse an equally satisfactory answer was obtained. He declared his faith in the 

 undertaking as a practicable one : that it might, could, and would be achieved. 



The Company undertook to make a series of careful soundings to ascertain the exact 

 nature of the ocean bottom over which the cable connecting Newfoundland with Ireland 



o 



would have to be laid. Mr. Field applied for this purpose to the American Government, 

 who immediately despatched the Arctic, under Lieutenant Berryman, on this useful and 

 most necessary service. She sailed from New York on the 18th of July,' 1856; and 

 on the following day Mr. Field left in the steamship Baltic for England, to organise 

 the Atlantic Telegraph Company. The Arctic proceeded to St. John's, and thence went 



