When, in 1865, it was decided to make another attempt at laying a cable under the Atlantic, Prof. Thomson, whose reputation was enhanced during the seven intervening years by a number of communications on the theory and practice of submarine telegraphy, was again retained as scientific expert in a consultative sense, with Mr. Cromwell F. Varley as chief electrician. In accordance with the costly experience that had been gained, a new cable was made and coiled on board the _Great Eastern_,[35] a leviathan which was well fitted for the work by the great man[oe]uvring power afforded by its screw and paddles combined. Leaving Valentia, the big ship steamed with her prow to the west at a slow rate of speed, in order to give the cable time to sink beneath the waves and adapt itself to the configuration of the ocean floor. Eleven hundred miles had been successfully paid out when, to the consternation of all, the cable suddenly snapped and disappeared in more than two miles of water. Attempts were made during the next nine days to recover it from those abysmal depths; and, though grappled many times during those trying hours, it gave way each time under the strain to which it was subjected. Like its predecessors of 1857 and 1858, the cable of 1865 was finally abandoned to its fate, and the _Great Eastern_ returned home with three greatly disappointed men on board, _viz._, Prof. Thomson, Mr. C. F. Varley and Captain (later Sir James) Anderson. In the following year, a sum of three-quarters of a million sterling, nearly $4,000,000, was offered to the Directors of the "Telegraph Construction Company" if they would complete the cable of 1865 and lay a new one. After consultation and careful consideration, the offer was accepted and the cable constructed according to the best engineering knowledge available. In 1866, Prof. Thomson was again on board the _Great Eastern_ with Captain Anderson; and this time the big ship had snugly coiled up in her deep, cavernous tanks _the_ cable that was destined to put Europe and America in permanent telegraphic communication. With a well-manufactured cable, improved paying-out machinery and an experienced staff of mechanical engineers, not to mention the foremost electricians of the day, the immersion of the cable was successfully effected, after which the American end of the cable of 1865 was raised, a new length spliced on, and the shore-end safely landed in Trinity Bay. Europe and America were thus united together by two electric bonds.