LA YING DEEP-SEA CABLES. 427 



cable, when the depth was two miles, the rate of 

 the ship six miles an hour, and the rate of paying 

 out of the cable, seven miles an hour, the resistance 

 to the egress of the cable accurately measured by a 

 dynamometer, was only 14 cwt. But it must have 

 been as much as 28 cwt., or the weight of two miles 

 of the cable hanging vertically down in water, were 

 it not for the frictional resistance of the water against 

 the cable slipping, as it were, down an inclined 

 plane from the ship to the bottom, which therefore 

 must have borne the difference, or 14 cwt. Accurate 

 observations are wanting as to the angle at which 

 the cable entered the water ; but from measure- 

 ments of angles at the stern of the ship, and a 

 dynamical estimate (from the measured strain) of 

 what the curvature must have been between the 

 ship and the water, I find that its inclination in the 

 water, when the ship's speed was nearly 6J miles 

 per hour, must have been about 6j, that is to say, 

 the incline was about I in 8^. Thus the length of 

 cable, from the ship to the bottom, when the water 

 was 2 miles deep, must have been about 17 miles. 

 The whole amount (14 cwt.) of fluid resistance to 



