The Story of the Atlantic Telegraph

But it was no time for useless regrets. Once more the cable was joined in mid-ocean, and dropped to its silent bed, and the Niagara and the Agamemnon began to steam away toward opposite shores of the Atlantic. This time the experiment succeeded better than before. The progress of the English ship is thus reported: "At first, the ship's speed was only two knots, the cable going three and three and a half, with a strain of fifteen hundred pounds. By and by, however, the speed was increased to four knots, the cable going five, at a strain of two thousand pounds. At this rate it was kept, with trifling variations, throughout almost the whole of Monday night, and neither Mr. Bright, Mr. Canning, nor Mr. Clifford ever quitted the machines for an instant. Toward the middle of the night, while the rate of the ship continued the same, the speed at which the cable paid out slackened nearly a knot an hour, while the dynamometer indicated as low as thirteen hundred pounds. This change could only be accounted for on the supposition that the water had shallowed to a considerable extent, and that the vessel was, in fact, passing over some submarine Ben Nevis or Skiddaw. After an interval of about an hour, the strain and rate of progress of the cable again increased, while the increase of the vertical angle seemed to indicate that the wire was sinking down the side of a declivity. Beyond this, there was no variation throughout Monday night, or, indeed, through Tuesday."