In 1853, stirred on by echoes of the technological advances that were happening on other continents, a business man by the name of Cyrus West Field attempted to lay a cable across the North Atlantic, starting in Newfoundland. The result: seven dead and three mutinied crew members (from a total of ten), 60km of cable lost, and a bankrupt company. These cables lasted an average of a few weeks before they were cut by an anchor or picked up by accident in a fishing net, or they simply stopped working for unknown reasons. But Field was not to be stopped, either by reason of being bankrupt or by his now rather questionable reputation, and by 1856 he had managed to obtain 3,500 km of cable from the British government and support from warships Agamemnon and Niagara, with the intention of laying the cable from Valentia in Ireland.