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378
The Story of the Atlantic Telegraph
·
Henry M. Field
107
"The
bill
was
then
read
a
third
time
and
passed."
CHAPTER
VIII.
THE
EXPEDITION
OF
1857.
Scarcely
was
the
business
with
the
American
Government
completed,
before
Mr.
Field
was
recalled
to
England.
Once
more
upon
the
waves,
he
forgot
the
long
delay
and
the
vexatious
opposition
which
he
left
behind--the
fogs
of
Newfoundland,
and
the
denser
fogs
of
Washington.
He
was
bound
for
England,
and
there
at
least
the
work
did
not
stand
still.
All
winter
long
the
wheels
of
the
machinery
had
kept
in
motion.
The
cable
was
uncoiling
its
mighty
folds
to
a
length
sufficient
to
span
the
Atlantic,
and
at
last
there
was
hope
of
victory.
Although
the
United
States
Government
had
seemed
a
little
ungracious
in
its
delay,
it
yet
rendered,
this
year
and
the
next,
most
important
service.
Already
it
had
prepared
the
way,
by
the
deep-sea
soundings,
which
it
was
the
first
to
take
across
the
Atlantic.
It
now
rendered
additional
and
substantial
aid
in
lending
to
this
enterprise
the
two
finest
ships
in
the
American
navy--the
Niagara
and
the
Susquehanna.
The
former
was
built
some
dozen
years
before
by
George
Steers--a
name
celebrated
among
our
marine
architects
as
the
constructor
of
the
famous
yacht
America,
that
"racehorse
of
the
sea,"
which
had
crossed
the
Atlantic,
and
carried
off
the
prize
in
the
British
Channel
from
the
yachts
of
England--and
was
designed
to
be
a
model
of
naval
architecture.
She
was
the
largest
steam-frigate
in
the
world,
exceeding
in
tonnage
the
heaviest
line-of-battle
ship
in
the
English
navy,
and
yet
so
finely
modelled
that,
propelled
only
by
a
screw,
she
could
make
ten
or
twelve
miles
an
hour.
Notwithstanding
her
bulk,
she
was
intended
to
carry
but
twelve
guns--being
one
of
the
first
ships
in
our
navy
to
substitute
a
few
heavy
Dahlgrens
for
half
a
dozen
times
as
many
fifty-six-pounders.
This
was
the
beginning
of
that
revolution
in
naval
warfare,
which
was
carried
to
such
extent
in
the
Monitors
and
other
ironclads
introduced
in
our
civil
war.
Each
gun
weighed
fourteen
tons--requiring
a
crew
of
twenty-five
men
to
wield
it--and
threw
a
shell
of
one
hundred
and
thirty
pounds
a
distance
of
three
miles.
One
or
two
broadsides
from
such
a
deck
would
sink
an
old-fashioned
seventy-four,
or
even
a
ninety
or
hundred-gun
ship.
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