John Mercer Brooke John Mercer Brooke ( December 18 , 1826 – December 14 , 1906 ) was an American sailor , engineer , scientist , and educator . He was instrumental in the creation of the Transatlantic Cable , and was a noted marine and military innovator . Early life and career . John M . Brooke was born in Fort Brooke ( modern - day Tampa ) , Florida . He was related to Congressman John Francis Mercer . His father was an army officer , General George Mercer Brooke , who died in San Antonio , Texas . He was a kinsman of General Dabney Herndon Maury as well as Virginia governor Robert Brooke . Brooke graduated from one of the earliest classes of the United States Naval Academy and became a lieutenant in the United States Navy in 1855 . He worked for many years with Commander Matthew Fontaine Maury at the United States Naval Observatory ( USNO ) , charting the stars as well as assisting in taking soundings of the ocean ' s bottom to determine the shape of the sea floor . Many believed the sea floor was flat , but all previous soundings as deep as eleven miles ( 18 km ) could not find the ocean bottom . Part of this was due to powerful undercurrents far below , rivers in the ocean traveling in various directions . In the struggles with soundings , which nobody had done anything of value at great depths it was after Maury ' s failure with a unique device he invented that gave Brooke an idea of taking deep sea soundings . Brooke perfected a " deep - sea sounding device " which was used afterwards by navies of the world until modern times and modern equipment replaced it . At Maury ' s direction , Brooke also added a " core - sampling device " for taking samples of the material of the sea floor . The outcome was a cannonball with a hollow tube through the center of it — a tube coated on the inside so as not to contaminate the samples . Studying this seafloor material with his microscope , Maury saw something that fascinated him . A sample was sent to Jacob Whitman Bailey at the United States Military Academy , who in November 1853 responded : Telegraph . The inference in all of this is that the area where the samples came from was the " telegraphic plateau " as called by Maury who had sent out ships to sound those depths at two hundred mile intervals from Newfoundland to Ireland . Maury had charted the underwater mountain ridge . The microscopic organisms left the sea floor on this " telegraphic plateau " were deep and soft so that the area was that of a long mountain chain with the top of those underwater mountains having a firm and soft coating of these dead organisms . This meant that the area was deep enough that no ship ' s anchor nor any fisherman ' s net would drag the area . The fact that there was no abrasion on these minute organisms meant that there were no strong currents in that area at that depth . Soon after publishing this , Cyrus West Field wrote to Maury of the USNO on the feasibility of laying a transatlantic cable and was given a positive reply and later details explanation face to face . Cyrus Field also contacted Samuel Morse regarding the feasibility of transmitting an electric current a distance of underwater . Again , Field was given an affirmative and soon visited Morse . Cyrus Field continued contacting these two men , Maury and Morse , gathering all possible information and offered them shares in his great adventure that would become a reality in 1858 when the Queen of the United Kingdom communicated with President Buchanan in Morse code through the transatlantic cable . Had it not been for Brooke ' s deep sea and core sampling device , the world would have had to wait on charting the floors of the undersea world and would not have had the undersea trans - atlantic cable for generations to come . Later career . As an expert in maritime surveys , he participated in exploratory missions in the Pacific . He had a role in the counseling and instruction of officers of the nascent Japanese Navy . In Japan , he was a technical adviser aboard the Japanese steamer " Kanrin Maru " , and he helped sail the ship to the United States in February 1860 . He was accompanied by Japanese representatives aboard the " Powhatan " . He was also instrumental in the development of a new rifled gun for the Navy that became known as the Brooke rifle . In 1861 , Brooke resigned from the U . S . Navy to join the Confederate Navy . He was involved in the conversion of the frigate USS " Merrimack " into the ironclad CSS " Virginia " . In 1862 , he was promoted to commander , and in 1863 , to Chief of the Confederate Navy ' s Bureau of Ordnance and Hydrography , until the end of the war . He was instrumental in the organization and establishment of the Confederate States Naval Academy . After the war , he became a professor at the Virginia Military Institute , at Lexington , Virginia . He retired in Lexington in 1899 . He died there in 1906 . Family life . John Mercer Brooke ' s parents were George Mercer Brooke , b . 1785 ( Va . ) and Lucy Thomas . John Mercer Brooke married : 1 . Mary Elizabeth Selden Garnett , b . 1 Mar 1826 who died . They had one daughter named Anna Maria Brooke , b . 12 Dec 1856 who never married . 2 . Catherine Carter " Kate " Corbin , the widow of Alexander Swift " Sandie " Pendleton kia September 22 , 1864 . John Mercer Brooke and Catherine Carter " Kate " Corbin of Moss Neck Manor ( and widow of Sandie Pendleton ) married on 14 Mar 1871 at St . George ' s Episcopal Church ( Fredericksburg , Virginia ) . John and " Kate " had three children : - - John Mercer Brooke and Catherine Carter " Kate " Corbin - Pendelton - Brooke are buried beside each other in the Stonewall Jackson Cemetery , Lexington , VA Namesake . The US Navy honored his career by naming the first ship of a new class of Destroyer Escort / Fast Frigate ships in his name . USS BROOKE - DEG - 1 ( Later renamed FFG - 1 )