The Story of the Atlantic TelegraphField, Henry M. (Henry Martyn)
History
The Story of the Atlantic Telegraph
Field, Henry M. (Henry Martyn)
Transatlantic cables
"Our track is about thirty miles to the south of that of last
year, and at that distance we passed parallel to where the
telegraph cable parted in August, 1857. Our average speed has
been about five knots. We were obliged to stop the screw
engines in order to bring down to that speed, and, moreover, to
reduce the paddle boiler power. Captain Anderson's ingenious
mode of cleaning the ship's bottom, which he carried out last
winter at Sheerness, has proved to have effected this very
desirable object. Mr. Beckwith, the engineer, is now enabled to
regulate and adjust her speed, and get more out of the ship
than he could last year, when her bottom was one incrusted mass
of mussels.
"Tuesday.--Another twenty-four hours of uninterrupted success.
All day yesterday it was so calm that the masts of our convoy
were reflected in the ocean, an unusual thing to see. A large
shoal of porpoises gambolled about us for half an hour. A
glorious sunset, and later, a crescent moon, which we hope to
see in the brightness of her full, lighting our way into
Trinity Bay before the days of this July shall have ended."
But the whole night did not pass away so tranquilly. By midnight the
rain fell fast, and the wind blew fiercely, and then occurred the only
real alarm of the voyage. The scene is thus described by Mr. Deane:
"All went on well until twenty minutes past twelve A.M.,
Greenwich time, when the first real shock was given to the
success which has hitherto attended us, and this time we had
real cause to be alarmed. A foul flake took place in the after
tank. The engines were immediately turned astern, and the
paying out of the cable stopped. We were all soon on deck, and
learned that the running or paying-out part of the coil had
caught three turns of the flake immediately under it, carried
them into the eye of the coil, fouling the lay out, and hauling
up one and a half turns from the outside, and five turns in the
eye of the under flake. This was stopped, fortunately, before
entering the paying out machinery. Stoppers of hemp also were
put on near the V-wheel astern, and Mr. Canning gave orders to
stand by to let go the buoy. This was not very cheering to
hear, but his calm and collected manner gave us all confidence
that his skill and experience would extricate the cable from
the obvious danger in which it was placed. No fishing line was
ever entangled worse than the rope was when thrust up in
apparently hopeless knots from the eye of the coil to the deck.
There at least five hundred feet of rope lay in this state, in
the midst of thick rain and increasing wind. The cable crew set
to work under their chief engineer's instructions to
disentangle it. Mr. Halpin was there too, patiently following
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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