140 A SAGA OF THE SEAS 
to was the artist of the cable expedition. The letter is as 
follows: 
Rochdale, March 28, ’66. 
My dear Mr. Field,—I will try to come to Liverpool to meet you 
on Friday, the 6th April, nothing unforeseen preventing. 
I shall be glad to spend a quiet evening with you before you 
sail. I shall be glad also to meet Mr. Dudley. 
You seem, as usual, to be hard at work up to the last day of 
your stay here. 
Always truly your friend, 
John Bright. 
Now that Field was on the Great Eastern again, with the 
cable being paid over the stern, he dismissed from his mind 
the political entanglements of the two countries. The crisis of 
his life’s work was at hand. After twelve years of unremitting 
effort, the last great attempt to bridge the ocean was under 
way. The combined technical skill of hundreds of picked 
men—skill built up by years of specialized research—was en- 
gaging the forces of nature in a final struggle for success. ‘The 
lessons of the cable had been difficult to learn, but able men 
had learned them. 
On a calm sea the telegraph fleet steamed slowly along. 
A speed of only five knots (about a hundred twenty miles a 
day) was considered safest. To curb the powerful machinery 
of the Great Eastern down to this rate, the propeller was 
stopped and the paddle wheels reduced below their capacity. 
The official record-keeper, Deane, explained that, since the 
ship’s bottom had been cleaned, the capacity for speed was 
greater; on the expedition of 1865 the bottom of the Great 
Eastern had been “one incrusted mass of mussels.” Deane’s 
Diary of the Expedition is not so thrilling as Russell’s book 
of the year before but is a faithful account of a less eventful 
trip. 
So calm was the sea that, in the words of Deane, ‘‘the masts 
of our convoy were reflected in the ocean, an unusual thing 
