The Story of the Atlantic Telegraph

"At noon, observations showed us to have made good one hundred and thirty miles from noon of the previous day, and about three hundred and sixty from our starting-point in mid-ocean. We had passed by the deepest sounding of twenty-four hundred fathoms, and over more than half of the deep water generally, while the amount of cable still remaining in the ship was more than sufficient to carry us to the Irish coast, even supposing the continuance of the bad weather should oblige us to pay out the same amount of slack cable we had been hitherto wasting. Thus far things looked very promising for our ultimate success. But former experience showed us only too plainly that we could never suppose that some accident might not arise until the ends had been fairly landed on the opposite shores. "During Sunday night and Monday morning the weather continued as boisterous as ever, and it was only by the most indefatigable exertions of the engineer upon duty that the wheels could be prevented from stopping altogether, as the vessel rose and fell with the sea, and once or twice they did come completely to a standstill, in spite of all that could be done to keep them moving; but fortunately they were again set in motion before the stern of the ship was thrown up by the succeeding wave. No strain could be placed upon the cable, of course; and though the dynamometer occasionally registered seventeen hundred pounds as the ship lifted, it was oftener below one thousand, and was frequently nothing, the cable running out as fast as its own weight and the speed of the ship could draw it. But even with all these forces acting unresistedly upon it, the cable never paid itself out at a greater speed than eight knots an hour at the time the ship was going at the rate of six knots and a half. Subsequently, however, when the speed of the ship even exceeded six knots and a half, the cable never ran out so quick. The average speed maintained by the ship up to this time, and, indeed, for the whole voyage, was about five knots and a half, the cable, with occasional exceptions, running about thirty per cent faster.