The Sun.
London, England, 1866-09-05 00:00:00

THE ATLANTIC CABLE OP 1865,

The recovery of the cable of 1865 from the very
lowest depths of the Atlantic seems to have taken
the world by surprise. It is not, however, too much
to say that no class of the community has felt more
astonishment than those who are best acquainted
with the difficulties of the task—the electricians. Few
believed with them that a good cable could be laid
across the Atlantic at all, while still fewer believed
in the pessibility of a broken cable being picked up
from three miles' depth of water. The few who re-
turned from last year's expedition knew that they
had grappled the broken cable, and could have
brought it to the surface but for the weakness of
their apparatus ; but it is not too much to say that
many even of the.directors of the Atlantic Company
were incredulous on the subject, and looked on the
wire of 1865 as hopelessly lost. That this opinion
was almost universal may be judged from the fact
that the underwriters who had insured .it at once
paid on it as on a total loss, and'a curious question
will now arise as to the amount of salvage to which
the Great Eastern is entitled for bringing the cable
to light again and restoring it to speech.
Fuller details have now come to hand as to the
manner in which the cable was raised. From the
moment of the fracture of last year's cable till last
Sunday morning the reflecting marine galvanometer
connected with the shore end at Valentia has been
incessantly watched. Night and a day for a whole
year an electrician has always been lon duty watch-
ing the tiny ray of light through which signals are
given, and twice every day the whole length of wire
—1,240 miles—has been tested for " conductivity"
and insulation. The results of these tests were
almost marvellous in their uniformity, and they
showed conclusively that up to the point of fracture
the cable was as perfect as on the day on which it
left the works—apart, of course, frcm the improve-
ment which always takes place in a wire submerged
in the cool and uniform temperature of great ocean
depths. The object of observing the ray of light
was, of course, not any expectation of a
message, but simply to keep an accurate record of
the condition of the wire. Sometimes, indeed, wild,
incoherent messages from the deep did come, but
these were merely the result of magnetic storms and
earth currents which deflected the galvanometer
rapidly and spelt the most extraordinary words, and
sometimes even sentences of nonsense, upon the gra-
duated scale before the mirror. Suddenly, last Sun-
day morning, at a qnater to 6, while the light was
being watched by Mr. May, he observed a peculiar
indication about the light, which showed at once to
his experienced eye that a message was near at hand.
In a few minutes afterwards the unsteady flickering
was changed to coherency, if we may use such a
term, and at once the cable began to speak. The
messages which have already appeared in our
columns came with a distinctness and precision even
greater than those of the cable laid this year. No
repetition of a word or letter was necessary, and a
few sentences of warm congratulation were at once
sent back, and as quickly responded to from the
Great Eastern by Mr. Canning. Both the shore
ends of the last year's cable and that laid this year
being in the little shanty at Foilhommerum, a mes-
sage of the good news was at once sent through to
Heart's Content, and a reply, wishing every good
fortune to the rest of the enterprise, was sent back
to Foilhommerum and transmitted to the Great
Eastern in the centre of the Atlantic within a quar-
ter of an hour. So also with the messages announc-
ing to the directors in London that the cable had
been raised. These, though they can scarcely be
said to have left Ireland before 7 o'clock, were de-
livered in the metropolis before 9, and return mes-
sages were sent back to the Great Eastern before
midday.
Now as to raising the cable itself. Only those
acquainted with telegraphic expeditions know the
dismay caused by the report, like that of a cannon,
as the weights of the dynamometer fall, when the
cable. parts and the wire leaps up over the stern of
the ship and disappears like a flash in the depths
of the ocean. Such an accident in the beginning of
submarine telegraphy was supposed to be fatal and
irremediable even if it occurred in only 300 fathoms
of water. The science of laying cables, however, has
progressed with a
_rapidity almost commensurate
with electricity itself, and within the last 10 years
cable after cable has been raised for repair from such
gradually increasing depths that now a thousand
fathoms is considered, comparatively speaking, shoal
water in which to grapple for a wire. Last year,
after the chble parted, it was grappled successfully
many times, but as the machinery was too weak it
was never brought to the surface, and of course the
fact of its ever having been caught at all was dis-
believed. Messrs. Canning and Clifford, however,
were perfectly confident, and as their records bore
out their assertions they were allowed to make pro-
per machinery of their own designs with which to
raise the cable which was broken last year. The
result has proved that they were right in their anti-
eipations. if any of our readers can imagine what
the difficulty would be of picking up a little rope in
Cheapside from the top of St. Paul's, they will be
able to form a faint notion of the difficulty of lift-
ing the wire lost last year in three miles' depth of
water and in the middle of the Atlantic. Apparently,
however, the ships, fitted with proper apparatus,
found no more difficulty in grappling the cable than
one might experience in raising night-lines for eels.
They all caught it, and caught it almost when and
where they wanted. The weather was very rough,
but, nevertheless, the Medway, which was the first
on the ground, succeeded in catching it, raising it
partly, and buoying it. In the night, however,
wh;le a heavy sea was running, the buoy ropes gave
way, and the cable went to the bottom again. It
must be remembered that, from repeated sound-
ings taken for the purposes of the telegraph, no
ocean bed is so well known to us as the bottom of
the Atlantic. When the cable was grappled for it
was covered with a soil composed literally of minute
shells of the diatomacece tribe, so minute, in fact,
as to be only visible under a microscope,
and so fine in their organisation as to prove
that not the slightest motion can exist at those
depths, for otherwise their delicate formation would
be destroyed. On these the cable has lain harmlessly
as on a bed of sand, and the grapnels, as we have
said, at once caught it. The Great Eastern and
the Medway did not arrive on the searching-ground
till the 12th of the month, and after preliminary
arrangements bad been made for working in con-
cert, the Great Eastern, on the evening of the 15th,
caught and raised the cable more than 500 fathoms.
In the act of buoying it the buoy rope slipped and
it was again lost. On the second day she caught it
again, and this time brought it to the surface. In
the act of bringing it over the bqws the grapnel
surged and the wire again plunged down to its rest-
ing-place, three miles beneath the ships. Once
more, within two days, it was raised by the Great
• Eastern, while the Albany, to the west, caught and
broke it, and all the work had to be begun again.
Oa the 26th the Medway caught it and brought it
tip a thousand fathoms, when, the sea being rough,
and the strain on the grapnel sudden and violent
from the pitching of the vessel, the rope broke. On
the evening of the same day, however, the Albany
caught it again, and brought it to the surface, and
Great Ea;tern, to " make assurance doubly
sure," got two miles of it on board and securely
buoyed what was
outside the vessel. The work of
making the splice
at once commenced, but not
•
where the wire was fastened to the buoy. The
Great Eastern, on the contrary,underran the wire
to a considerable distance to
the
theast in order to get
rid of the tangle in which the different buoy and
grapnel ropes must have involved its western ex-
tremity. After this necessary process some 80 miles
of the wire were abandoned.

The Great Eastern has now about four more days'
steaming to bring her safely into Heart's Content
passed the deepest water on her
Already she has
route ; in fact, the very deepest water she can en-
counter was that from which she has raised the
cable of last year. All fear, therefore, as to the
safety of the line may be considered at an end, and
by Sunday next at latest the shareholders will be
in possession of two perfect lines. How much they
may be congratulated on this may be guessed from
the fact that their present line, which is steadily
increasing in its returns, is already earning money
at the rate of £900,000 a year. No one will grudge