The Great Cable Layer

Image: Halpin image

In an attempt to regain some of the losses the ship had endured during her life the managers decided to place the Great Eastern as the main prize in an international raffle. The idea soon failed and in 1864 it was decided to auction the ship off. Daniel Gooch bought the ship for £25,000. Daniel Gooch and Cyrus Field planned to use the Great Eastern to lay a telegraph cable from the UK all the way to America. For the trans-Atlantic cable expedition the Great Eastern acquired its eighth captain, Captain James Anderson, with Robert Halpin as its First Officer. For the refit, the fourth funnel, as well as 2 of the ships 10 boilers were removed. Saloons, cabins and holds were also ripped out to make way for the huge cable tanks. To complete the refit huge cable paying-out and pick-up gear was fitted on the deck making the Great Eastern look more like an engineering factory than an ocean liner. Cyrus Field had been involved in the failed trans-Atlantic cable expedition laid by the Agamemnon and the Niagara in 1858. Then both ships carried half the cable each met in the middle of the Atlantic, joined the cables and then headed for home. This time the Great Eastern could carry enough cable for the entire journey. With a constant stream of test messages being sent from the electricians on board the ship, along the laid cable to the cable hut in Valencia, the Great Eastern made its way slowly across the Atlantic. The messages were sent in a pre-arranged series of 29 messages sent too Valencia with a series of 30 messages back to the Great Eastern. This way, the electricians could check whether the cable that they had laid was still working. The electricians huddled around the mirror galvanometer as it flickered the reflected candle light across a gauge placed in a darkened caboose on the deck of the Great Eastern. If the cable would break, the messages would cease and an electrician would duck-out from underneath the black out curtain and sound a bronze gong placed outside the caboose.

Image: Beckwith image

Having laid 1,186 miles of cable and having already had to make various repairs, the gong sounded again. During the repair a breeze caused the cut cable to break loose and plummet to the seabed before anyone could do anything about it. It seemed that in an instant everything had been lost. The cable was believed to lie 1 mile down on the seabed, but even so, the decision was made to attempt to grapnel for the cable. The attempted recovery of the cable the Great Eastern would be the only time that the Great Eastern was powered by its sails alone. By 6 a.m. the following morning the increase in the tension on the grapnel’s wire rope indicated that they had finally hooked the cable at an astonishing depth of 3 miles. After 2 hours of hauling the grapnel in, the wire rope broke but the brakeman miraculously managed to catch it in the winch gear before it was lost again to the depths. By early afternoon, after most of the wire rope had been winched on board it broke again and the grapnel and the cable plummeted to the seabed again. Thick fog set in so the area was marked with a buoy and the Great Eastern stood by awaiting better weather conditions. Buoys would ordinarily be anchored using the same wire rope as that used on the grapnel. In order to preserve enough of the wire rope for a second grapnel attempt the buoy’s anchor was attached to the buoy by a 3 mile length of the expensive telegraph cable itself! During the next 2 days the crew made another grapnel attempt only for the grapnel’s wire rope to break again. During the third attempt the crew cobbled together a 3 mile length of grapnel rope from anything they could lay their hands on. It took another 3 days to hook the cable and by then most onboard could not bear the suspense and retreated to the Grand Saloon to drown the sound of the winch gear out with the pianoforte and to calm their nerves with stiff brandy. A reporter at the time said “every jar of the winch gear, every shackle that passed the drum, every clank, made their hearts leap into their mouths”. By the evening this last grapnel rope broke simultaneously breaking the hearts of everyone on board. The watch guard made a note of the longitude and the latitude and the Great Eastern turned solemnly eastwards and returned home.

Image: Great eastern at Newfoundland

By the spring of the following year a new cable had been made and was loaded onto the Great Eastern for a fresh attempt. This time, having learnt a lot from the previous voyage, the Great Eastern made good progress with few faults to the cable and soon completed the voyage, arriving at Hearts Content in Newfoundland. The Great Eastern wasted no time in returning to the buoy dropped a year earlier and with the weather in their favour after 3 attempts the 1865 cable was brought aboard the ship. At the time Cyrus Field remarked “the cable was brought to the electricians room to see whether it was alive or dead. Never shall I forget the eventual moment when, in answer to our question to Valencia, in an instant came those memorable letters, O.K”. This meant that the cable was still usable. Being a reserved and taciturn man Cyrus Field quietly left the electricians room, went to his cabin, locked the door and cried with joy… everyone else got very drunk! With sore heads, the crew fastened the cable to the buoy and the Great Eastern then ran full steam to the UK to complete the task started a year earlier. Returning, they successfully made the splice and continued the cable to Newfoundland.

Top