The Sun.
London, England, 1865-07-26 00:00:00

WAR-OFFICE, PALL-MALL, JULY 25,

16th Regiment of LanCers—Captain Jimes Goldie, from
the 17th Lancers, to be Captain, vice Battine, who ex-
changes.
17th Lancers—Captain William A. Battine, from the 16th
Lancers, to be Captain, vice Goldie, who exchanges.
sth Regiment of Foot—Ensign Thomas Arthur Cooke to
be Lieutenant, without purchase, vice James Henry
Clutterbuck, deceased ; 'Gentleman Cadet Henry Aitkin
Cherry, from the Royal Military College, to be Ensign,
without purchase, vice Cooke.
Bth Foot Ensign Francis James Stuart to be Lieutenant,
by pprchase, vice William W. Madden, who retires;

Gentleman dada Edmund Percival Wilford, froin the
Royal Military College, to be Ensign, by purchase, vice

Stuart.
9th Foot—Gentleman Cadet William Crighton Gray,
from the Royal Military College, to be Ensign, with-
out purchase, vice Martin, transferred to the 65th

Foot.
12th Foot—Lieutenant William Henry Crawhill to bo
Captain, without purchase, vice Nesbitt, whose promo-
tion on the 15th of December, 1864, has been cancelled ;

Ensign John Albert Little to be Lieutenant, by pur:
chase, vice Henry Nesbitt, who retires; Ensign Thomas
Francis Hobday from the 39th Foot, to be Ensign, vice
Little.

13th Foot—Gentleman Cadet Bryan Bristow Twyne, from
the Royal Military College, to be Ensign, by purchase,
vice Henry Hart, promoted.
26th Foot—Major Shurlock Henning to be Lieutenant-
Colonel, by purchase, vice Brevet-Col. Francis Carey,
who retires upon half-pay ; Capt. Charles R. B. Calcott
to be Major, by purchase, vice Henning; Lieut. Georgo
Philip Fawkes to be Captain, by purchase, vice Calcott ;
Ensign Vivian Devonport to be Lieutenant, by purchase,
vice Fawkes.
33d Foot—Ensign Richard Mant Miller to be Lieutenant,
by purchase, vice Henry G. Boyd, who retires ; Ensign
Howard Melliss, from the 34th Foot, to be Ensign, vice
Miller.
3491 Foot—Gentleman Cadet Thomas Arthur Hill Lowe,

from the Royal Military College, to be Ensign, by pur-
chase, vice Melfiss, transferred to the 33d Foot.
39th Foot—Gentleman Cadet Thomas Francis Hobday,
from the Royal liilitary College, to be Ensign, without
purchase, vice sHenry O'Brien, deceased ; Gentleman
Cadet Edward Bides Wilson, from the Royal Military
College, to be Enfign, by purchase, vice Thomas Francis
Hobday, transfe*ed to the 12th Foot.
44th Foot—Lieutenant E. C. Pemberton Pigott to be Ad-
jutant, vice Lieutenant Augustus Richard Trimmer, who
resigns that appointment.
49th Foot— George Charles Todd Naylor, Gent., to be
Ensign, by purchase, vice Walter James Tweed, who

retires..
53d Foot—Lieutenant Henry Sohn Beckwith to bo Cap-
thin, by purchase, vice Gustavus Lambert Basset, who
retires ; Ensign Frederick Bowyer Lane to be Lieuten-
ant, by purchase, vice Beckwith ; Gentleman Cadet
Francis 'rescod Gurney, from the Royal Military
College, to be Ensign, by purchase, vice Lane.
65th Foot—Ensign Arthur Henry 'Leyland to be Lieuten-
ant, without purchase, vice Arthur Henry Lewis, de-
ceased ; Ensign Charles Grosvenor Byam Martin, from
the 9th Foot, to be Ensign, vice 'Leyland.
85th Foot—Lieutenant Kennaway William Henry Noyes
to be Captain, by purchase, vice George Morland, who
retires ; Ensign Nathaniel Henry Hodgson to be Lieu-
tenant, by purchase, vice Noyes •, Gentleman Cadet
Windham George Conway Anstruther, from the Royal
Military College, to be Ensign, by purchase, vice
Hodgson.

88th Foot—Lieut. John James Davidson to be Instructor
of Musketry, vice Lieut. Arthur Allen Owen, who has
resigned the appointment.
106th Foot—Ensign Frederick Mercer Hunter, to be Lieu-
tenant, vice Arthur P. Hancock, who resigns ; Gentle-
man Cadet Henry Alexander Bruce Moorhouse, from the
Royal Military College, to be Ensign, vice Hunter.
4th West Inia Regiment—Ensign Patrick Belly, from the
Ist West India Regiment, to be Ensign, . vice Barrow,
promoted to a Lieutenancy, without purchase, on the
Half-pay List.
Ceylon Rifle Regiment—Ensign John Quarry to be In-
structor of Musketry, vice Lieutenant Henry Whalley
Melliss, who has resigned the appointment.
HALF-PAY.— Lieutenant Daniel Moody, from the 60th

Foot, to be Captain, without purchase.
MEDICAL DEPARTMENT.—Staff Assistant-Surgeon Samuel
Joseph Bayfield to be Staff Surgeon, vice Staff Surgeon
Major Thos. Patrick Matthew, deceased ; Assist -Burg.
John N. Bracken, from the Royal Artillery, to be Staff
Assist.-Surgeon, vice Samuel Joseph Bayfield ; Assist.-
Surgeon Nicholas Avent, from the 66th Foot, to be Staff
Asssist.-Surgeon, vice Thos. Seward, M.D., appointed to
the 59th Foot.

The Atlantic Telegraph Expedition.

VALENTIA, July 23.

Before this reaches the public the Great Eastern,
if all all go well, will already have laid some 300
miles of the Atlantic cable, will have passed over
the shoal known on the submarine maps as the
Irish Bank, and have steadily settled down to her
work in some 2,000 fathoms water. Nothing could
possibly have been more auspicious than all the cir-
cumstances attending her departure) both as regards
weather and the mechanical fitness of all the appa-
ratus connected with the process of submerging.
During her stay at Beerhaven all the machinery for
paying out, under-running, letting go the buoy
rope, &c., has been tested and found to answer on
in the factory at board the ship as well as
Wool-
wich. The circular guards, called crinolines, to be I
suspended over the cable tanks, and through the
centre of which the cable will be paid out, have
been fixed, and the contents of the three tanks,
which hale hitherto been only temporarily joined,
'carefully spliced-together as they are to the rest at
the bottom of the Atlantic. As the cable is to be
paid out first from the after tank, and next from
the forward, the end of that in the tank astern has
to be joined with the first part of that ahead. For
this purpose it has to be taken along the whole
length of the Great Eastern's deck under a wooden
case, which is firmly screwed down, to protect it
alike from accidental or malicious injury, the latter,
strange to say, being generally considered the more
formidable of the two risks. When the cable is
paid out from the aftermost tank, the long " lead,"
as it is termed, to the forward coil will make this
part of the transmission comparatively easy and safe,
but passing from the forward to the midship section
is only a short distance, and this will be the greatest
danger of the undertaking. With a stiff wire rope
passing out at six knots, or nearly seven miles an
hour, its liability to kink in running from one coil to
another is something unpleasantly easy, while stop-
ping the speed of the vessel is almost even more
dangerous, as it suddenly checks some four or five
miles of heavy iron rope in its downward course to
the bottom. Almost every accident that has oc-
curred in laying cables has arisen either from pass-
ing from coil to coil at speed, or slowing the vessel
too much to reduce this danger. The composite
order of the machinery of the Great Eastern, which
enables her with her paddle wheel engines to turn at
once astern, reduces this danger, however, to as low
a risk as possible. During all the time that the vessel
has been at Beerhaven the cable has been regularly
tested through at least twice a day, and in every
instance the signals have been singularly clear and
perfect. Beyond all question the condition of the
wire is certain to improve, if successfully laid, under
the great compression and uniform temperature
which the depths of the Atlantic will afford it.
Thus, for instance, with the shore end, which was
laid on Saturday, the testing on board the Caroline
gave only 7,000,000 units, yet yesterday, when
it had scarcely been down some 30 hours, this rate
had risen from 7,000,000 to 13,000,000 units. The
average rate of perfection of the Atlantic cable for
the deep sea portion has been 11,000,000 units, so
that on being submerged 15,000,000 units may be
safely looked for, an improvement :which ought to
make a difference of at least one and a half words a
minute in the rate of telegraphing, or, in other words,
a gain of £150,000 a year in the receipts of the com-
pany. The Great Eastern was warned on Saturday
to keep herself in readiness for an early start at
daybreak yesterday to join the Caroline, which had
the end of the shore line on board. It may be
mentioned that the shore end of the cable, though
commenced under the cliffs with what seems a pon-
derous bar of iron, gradually tapers into a smaller
and lighter rope as the depth of water and distance
from the shore increases. Under the rocks it is for
five miles out 2J inches in diameter ; at ten miles
distance only 2 inches ; at 15 miles it is reduced to
1f inches, at 20 miles to about 1 inch, and at 25
miles of its extreme length it merges into the ordi-
nary size of the deep sea wire, with which it has to
be joined. The Caroline laid this end, as we have
already described, on Saturday, carefully buoying
the last portions of it, leaving some half-mile or so
on board her decks to form the splice. This opera-
tion was completed yesterday. The Great Eastern
was off Bray head at 9 a.m., but at such a distance
from the dangerous shore that only those provided
with good glasses could make out from the land
where the huge vessel lay, under the cloud of smoke
which she poured forth, and which reached like a
fog-bank across the ocean. The party who started
to witness the making of the splice and the final
starting left Valentia in the Hawk, the Great
Eastern's rapid tender, soon after 9 in the morning.
Among those on board were Lord John Hay, Sir R.
Peel, M.P., the Knight of Kerry, with his daughters,
the Misses Fitzgerald, Capt. White, R.N., Captain
Hamilton, Mr. W. 11. Russell, Mr. Edwards, Mrs.
Glass, &c. The western extremity of Ireland was
reached in about an hour, and soon afterwards the
magnificent rock that carries the Skellig Light, a
wild stupendous mass of cliff which, amid deep
water, rises from the ocean to a height of 800 feet,
and which the incessant beat of the Atlantic seems
to have worn into seams and angry gaps that
almost undermine its base. About 15 miles beyond
these rocks the Great Eastern was at rest, not
moving to the dull, easy swell, though her two
guards of honour, the Terrible and Sphinx, were
rolling slightly ; while the Caroline, with the end of
the shore cable on board, and looking uglier than
ever now that she was light and out of water, was
especially lively. It is difficult to describe in any
but the most matter-of-fact terms the routine
process which marked the commencement of this
enterprise. It had already begun when the Hawk
arrived and the paddle-box boats of the men-of-
war and the cutters of the Great Eastern were filled
with cable, which passing through the paying-out
machine astern was being slowly towed from the
great ship to the Caroline. The operation of splicing
was one of time and difficulty, for smooth as the
sea had seemed from land the regular heave of the
Atlantic was deep enough. Sir Robert Peel, Lord
John Hay, and Mr. Russell managed to get on
board the Great Eastern, but with such difficulty
that few others were induced to venture on the risk
of the undertaking, and still fewer to accomplish it.
Soon after one o'clock the coils of the deep sea
cable were safely wound on board the Caroline, and
the work of splicing them at once commenced.
This was done by stripping both ends of, hemp out-
side wires, and gutta percha for a short distance till
the copper conductor of the line was laid bare, and
pared down to a fine wedge-shaped point at either
end. The connecting conductors were then over-
lapped in the form known as a ,4 scarf joint, and
firmly bound
together with fine threads of copper
wire, till the junction was made even stronger than
the main portions of the line. The threads and
conductor were then soldered together thickly, and
strips of soft gutta percha, like bands of brown
tape, were wound layer over layer, and their edges
closely pressed, so as to form one homogeneousmass, till a certain thickness was completed.
Then
came a coating of insulating material called Chat-
terton's Compound, and then again anotherlayer of
gutta percha tape, until the whole was inclosed in
four rings of the .gutta percha and three of the
Compound. The joint was then immersed in
cold water for testing, and the signals proving
perfect, the last protection of hemp and outside
wire was added, and the joint sunk again into
the sea, that its perfectness as to con-
ductivity and insulation might be ascertained from
the extreme end of the whole length of the cable on
board the Great Eastern. It was past 4 o'clock be-
fore the last of these tests was concluded, not that
it did not test well from the first, but simply because
it was intended to exhaust every trial known to elec-
tricians before the great journey was begun. All
the signals from end to end of the wire came won-
derfully distinct into the instrument room of the
p Leceiving-bouse at the head of Foilhommerum-bay,
and at 4.30 the fl
gas on board the Caroline and
Great Eastern we
re anted down to show that all
was ready. By that time the Great Eastern, which
had always kept m •
ovll3o*° her paddles at
intervals, had forged ahead of the Caroline some
two or three miles, paying out the cable slowly as
she went on, and leaving the latter vessel the only
float by which one portion of the • wire was kept
above water. The instant, however, that the flags .

went down the last fastenings which held it to the
Caroline were cast adrift, and with a great splash
the final joint of the Atlantic Telegraph and the first
30 miles of its length went down slowly into the
blue water and were out of sight. Long before this
Sir Robt. Peel and Lord John Hay had returned on
board the Hawk, which at once steamed away, when
the splice was turned adrift, to overtake the Great
Eastern. This was very easily done, for while the
latter was barely steaming five knots an hour the
former was running fourteen. As the tender came
near the thin narrow rope of cable could be seen
passing over the last wheel astern, and sinking into
the foam without strain of any kind, as it seemed
for a moment or so to float slowly aft before it dis-
appeared under the swell that still kept rolling
deeply in. The after deck sponsons bridge and
paddle-boxes of the Great Eastern were crowded as
the Hawk came alongside, and it was easy from the
distance which the tender held to distinguish the
faces of those on board as they waved their hats and
cheered. In the midst of this the Great Eastern
fired two guns from her bows at 5.30 to mark the
commencement of her journey, and Sir Robert Peel,
mounting to the little quarter-deck of the Hawk,
marked time, while three small but earnest cheers
were given by the select company on board to the
success of the great enterprise. In return came back
a swelling, hearty roar from all on the cable ship,
as with the last salute of waving hats and caps and
handkerchiefs the tender dropped astern, leaving the
Great Eastern dippling slowly but steadily ahead, at
the rate of about six knots an hour. Both the Ter-
rible and Sphynx were close at hand, contributing a
little, and but a little, to the huge volume of smoke
which their gigantic consort spread far and wide over
the sea, and which even appeared in the distance to
taint the blue mountains of Kerry on shore. As long
as signs could be made or hats waved the vessel was
anxiously watched, but she soon hid herself in her
own smoke, and when the Hawk neared the Irish
coast a mere brown cloud in the horizon was all that
showed where the greatest ship in the world was
steaming away to endeavour to accomplish the reali-
zation of an idea even more venturesome and infinitely
more important thantnat which she herself embodies.
May she be successful !
VALENTIA, July 25, 9.30 p.m.

Signals received from the Great Eastern at 9 a.m.
to-day report the discovery of a fault, and perfect
repair of the cable. The intelligence reached here in
time to prevent the sailing of the Caroline to pick up
the splice. The news, however, could not be sent to
London, as the land lines were down between this
and Killarney, and were not repaired till this evening.
The last signals from the Great Eastern at 4.30 p.m.
report that the paying out has been resumed and
that all is going well. Both signals and reverse
current are remarkably clear and strong.

The following telegram •has been received by Renter's
Telegraph Company (Limited) from Mr. A. 11. Glass,
managing director of the Telegraph Construction and
-Maintenance Company (Limited) :
" VALENTIA, July 25.
" The Great Eastern telegraphs, inlat. 52, long.
12, that a small fault has been discovered and cut
out. She is now paying out again, and the signalling
is perfect. Weather very fine."