The Story of the Atlantic Telegraph

As the attempt is now to be renewed on a grand scale, the reader may wish some further details of the means employed to insure success. As nothing in this whole enterprise has excited such astonishment, nothing merits a more careful history. When it was first proposed to drag the bottom of the Atlantic for a cable lost in waters two and a half miles deep, the project was so daring that it seemed to be almost a war of the Titans upon the gods. Yet never was anything undertaken less in the spirit of reckless desperation. The cable was recovered, as a city is taken by siege--by slow approaches, and the sure and inevitable result of mathematical calculation. Every point was studied beforehand--the position of the broken end, the depth of the ocean, the length of rope needed to reach the bottom, and the strength required to lift the enormous weight. To find the place was a simple question of nautical astronomy--a calculation of latitude and longitude. It seemed providential that, when the cable broke on the second of August, 1865, it was a few minutes after noon; the sun was shining brightly, and they had just taken a perfect observation. This made it much easier to go back to the place again. The waters were very deep, but that they could touch bottom, and even grapple the cable, was proved by the experiments of the year before. But could any power be applied which should lift it without breaking, and bring it safely on board? This was a simple question of mechanics. Prof. Thomson had made a calculation that in raising the cable from a depth of two and a half miles, there would be about ten miles of its length suspended in the water. Of course, it was a very nice matter to graduate the strain so as not to break the cable. For this it had been suggested that two or three ships should grapple it at once, and lifting it together, ease the strain on any one point--a method of meeting the danger that was finally adopted with success.