THE CABLE IS LAID 197 
which had also served in 1865. The telegraph company had 
chartered two other ships, the Albany and the Medway; the 
latter carried several hundred miles of the old cable and a 
short, heavy cable of ninety miles to go across the Gulf of St. 
Lawrence between Newfoundland and Nova Scotia. Another 
smaller ship served to lay the Irish shore end. 
On board were some of the veterans of former expeditions. 
“Blessings on their hearts of oak,” wrote Henry Field. The 
chief engineer, Samuel Canning, was there, prepared to do 
better grappling than a year before, with the aid of the im- 
proved apparatus. Another veteran is best described by Henry 
Field: ‘““That slight form yonder is Professor ‘Thomson of 
Glasgow, a man who in his knowledge of the subtle element 
to be brought into play, and the enthusiasm he brings to its 
study, is the very genius of electrical science.’ Last but not 
least, there was Cyrus Field himself—lean and hawk-like, the 
dauntless crusader and persevering promoter. He had made 
a trip to America in the spring but had returned. Unfortu- 
nately the eloquent Dr. Russell, of the Times, was at the scene 
of war in Germany; the secretary of the Anglo-American Com- 
pany, John C. Deane, kept the official diary on board. Sir 
Charles Bright, the capable engineer of the first cable, was 
at this time a member of Parliament and busy in London, but 
his partner, Latimer Clark, was at Valentia to represent the 
firm as consulting engineers for the Anglo-American Com- 
pany. 
The fleet sailed on Friday, the thirteenth of July. Some of 
the sailors thought that a few hours’ delay would do better 
than starting on such a doubly unlucky day. It was pointed 
out, however, that Columbus sailed from Spain on a Friday 
and discovered the New World on a Friday. As a matter of 
fact, this telegraph expedition reached land on the New- 
foundland coast on a Friday just two weeks later. 
The ocean end of the thirty-mile shore-cable had been 
marked by a buoy. The fleet found this, despite the fog, and 
