84 A SAGA OF THE SEAS 
both high authorities, agreed that the cable had been ruined 
by too intense currents, which had burst through the gutta- 
percha covering. One simile suggested was that, in engineer- 
ing terms, high-pressure steam had been used in a low-pres- 
sure boiler. Not enough was understood about electricity 
at this time. 
These unexpected slips of science indicate the odds that 
handicapped Cyrus Field’s efforts to lay and operate an At- 
lantic cable. He had persuaded capitalists to invest large 
sums of money in the belief that a cable could be made strong 
enough to be paid out from a ship into water three miles deep; 
and that electricians could then send signals through two 
thousand miles of this cable, which could not be relayed or 
maintained as a land wire could. His plans assumed that, as 
Lieutenant Maury had reported, the bed of the ocean in this 
place was more level and moderate in depth than elsewhere, 
and that there would be little disturbance or abrasion to a 
cable laid on the bottom. All these assumptions depended 
upon a conquest of nature by a knowledge of science that had 
not yet been established. Cyrus Field was downcast by this 
failure. He was disappointed, but not beaten. Peter Cooper 
helped to cheer him up; Wilson Hunt was also hopeful; 
‘Taylor and Roberts were pessimistic. 
Undismayed by repeated blows of fate, he was in London 
next spring and urged the directors of the British Company 
to raise six hundred thousand pounds for laying a new cable 
and perhaps repairing the old one. But subscriptions to the 
new stock came in very slowly. The idea was gaining ground 
that the enterprise was too difficult for a private corporation, 
and that the British Government should take it over. The 
Company finally asked the Government to guarantee the in- 
terest on part of the stock even if the next attempt failed. 
This request might have been granted except for an un- 
favorable development in another submarine telegraph, 
which deepened the public pessimism about cables in general. 
