PERSEVERANCE, PERSEVERANCE 121 
This was preferred stock, to pay eight percent, and its absorp- 
tion cleared the way for action. 
Another lucky maneuver was now accomplished in the en- 
gagement of the splendid (but unprofitable) steamer, the 
Great Eastern. This 22,500-ton ship—the largest in the world 
—had proved too big for ordinary service. A change of owner- 
ship and a favorable contract were now arranged. Such a 
ship would be able to carry the heavier cable now to be used, 
whereas two ships had been required to hold the previous 
cables. The contract with the owners provided that if the 
cable was not laid successfully, no charge would be made for 
the ship’s services. But if it was laid successfully, the payment 
would be fifty thousand pounds in shares of telegraph stock. 
It was, thus, largely the contractors who financed this latest 
attempt at laying a cable. Apparently the example of the 
cables operating successfully in the Mediterranean and Per- 
sian Gulf, one of which was over fifteen hundred miles long, 
had convinced the British that enough was now known of the 
correct technique to lay an Atlantic cable. The exigencies 
arising from the Civil War, as Field repeatedly pointed out, 
also had demonstrated the great need for telegraphic com- 
munication between Europe and America. 
For the new cable, there was talk of using hemp rope 
around the insulated copper wire, with no iron sheathing, 
but a compromise was accepted of steel wires encased in thick 
hemp. The new cable was larger and costlier than had been 
used before. The earlier cable had been less than three- 
quarters of an inch in diameter; the new one was an inch and 
a tenth, including the hemp. This made a relatively larger 
area of cross-section than at first appears. The old cable had 
weighed one ton to the nautical mile; the new one weighed 
thirty-six hundred pounds per mile—nearly twice as much. 
But immersed in water the new cable weighed only slightly 
more than the old one. This was helpful, because it thus sank 
slowly in water, as was desired. 
