The Story of the Atlantic Telegraph

Thus, after three anxious hours, the danger was past, and the next morning the report of the ship is, "A fresh breeze from the southward, a dull gray sky, with occasional rain, and a moderate sea." "Thursday.--There was a fresh breeze in the afternoon yesterday, increasing toward evening. It brought a heavy swell on the port quarter, which caused the ship to roll. The paying out from the after tank went on steadily. Two of the large buoys were lifted by derrick from the deck near the bows of the ship, and placed in position on the port and starboard side of the forward pick-up machinery, ready for letting go if necessary. The sun went down with an angry look, and the scud came rapidly from the eastward, the sea rising. A wind dead aft is not the best for cable laying, particularly if any accident should take place. By half-past eleven to-night we shall have exhausted the contents of the after tank, and the cable will then be paid out from the fore tank along the trough to the stern, the distance from the centre of the tank to the paying-out machinery being four hundred and ninety-four feet. Last night the swell was very heavy, to which the Great Eastern proved herself not insensible. Her rolling, like everything else appertaining to her, is done on a grand scale. We see the liveliness with which that operation is performed on board the Albany and Medway, and we are not at all disposed to be too critical in our observations on our own movements. The speed of the ship was kept at four and a half during the night--the slower the better, is the opinion of all on board--festina lente. We are consuming about one hundred tons a day of the seven thousand tons of coal which we had on board when we left Berehaven, and Mr. Beckwith, who has been engineer of the Great Eastern from her first voyage to the present moment, says her engines were never in better order; and their appearance and working do him and his able staff of assistant engineers the greatest credit.