He returned to England about the first of May to find the work nearly completed. The cable was almost done, and a large part of it was already coiled on board the ship. This was an operation of much interest, which deserves to be described. The manufacture had begun on the first of September, and had gone on for eight months without ceasing, the works turning out fourteen miles a day even during the short days of winter. As the spring advanced, and the days grew longer, the amount was of course much increased. But by the last of January they had already accumulated about nine hundred miles of completed cable, when began the long and tedious work of transferring it to the Great Eastern. It was thus slow, because it could not be made directly from the yard to the ship. The depth of water at Greenwich was not such as to allow the Great Eastern to be brought up alongside the wharf. She was lying at Sheerness, thirty miles below, and the cable had to be put on board of lighters and taken down to where she lay in the stream. For this purpose the Admiralty had furnished to the Company two old hulks, the Iris and the Amethyst, which took their loads in turn. When the former had taken on board some two hundred and fifty tons of cable, she was towed down to the side of the Great Eastern, and the other took her place. This was an operation which could not be done with speed. With all the men who could be employed, they coiled on board only about two miles an hour, or twenty miles a day--at which rate it would take some five months. The work began on the nineteenth of January, early in the morning, and continued till June, before all was safely stowed on board. The Great Eastern herself had been fitted up to receive her enormous burden. It was an object to stow the cable in as few coils as possible. Yet it could not be all piled in one mass. Such a dead weight in the centre of the ship would cause her to roll fearfully. If coiled in one circle, it was computed that it would nearly fill Astley's theatre from the floor of the circus to the roof--making a pile fifty-eight feet wide and sixty feet high. To distribute this enormous bulk and weight, it was disposed in three tanks--one aft, one amidships, and one forward. The latter, from the shape of the ship, was a little smaller than the others, and held only six hundred and thirty-three miles of cable, while the two former held a little over eight hundred each. All were made of thick wrought-iron plates, and water-tight, so that the cable could be kept under water till it was immersed in the sea.