Cyrus W. Field (1819–1892)
The entrepreneur behind the transatlantic cable, Field was born in
Massachusetts in the United States in 1819, and became wealthy through a
International, submarine telegraphy began in 1850 with a line between Britain
and France, as mentioned in Pioneers’ Page for December 2006. In that
article, we asked how a flagpole in Liverpool, United Kingdom, connects the
engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel with the Atlantic Telegraph Company. The answer
is Brunel’s last creation: the Great Eastern, a ship which laid the
first, successful transatlantic telegraph cable. After the ship was broken up in
1888, one of its masts became a flagpole outside Liverpool Football Club. And it
was in Liverpool that the first meeting of the Atlantic Telegraph Company took
place in 1856.
The Field force
The wooden HMS Agamemnon encounters a whale while laying the first
transatlantic telegraph cable
Making transatlantic telegraphy into a reality required not only technical
advances, such as the use of gutta percha to insulate submarine cables (see
December’s Pioneers' Page); it also required an entrepreneur with vision.
That person was Cyrus West Field — the force behind the project.
In 1854, Field was asked by the British engineer Frederick Gisbourne to
invest in a telegraph line between Newfoundland in Canada and New York. This
would allow messages from Europe to reach the United States more quickly, as
ships could signal ahead as soon as they reached the Canadian coast. Field
agreed to finance completion of the project — adding the ultimate aim of
extending the telegraph across the Atlantic itself. Instead of taking up to
12 days for a message to be sent from London to New York, it might only take a
Great Eastern at the port of Heart’s Content, Canada.
The huge ship was the first to have a double hull.
The first link
The planned route of the transatlantic cable was just over 3000 km long and
involved depths of up to 2400 fathoms (4.39 km). Success would require
accomplishing an unprecedented technical feat. It also meant overcoming
political opposition in the United States and a lack of American finance during
an economic downturn. However, Field found backing in Britain’s main commercial
centres, as well as from the British government. He launched the Atlantic
Telegraph Company with a board of directors that included Samuel Morse, as well
as John Watkins Brett, who had opened the telegraph between Britain and France a
few years before.
The biggest ship in the world
Brunel was born in Portsmouth, England, in 1806. As well as many railway
projects, he designed the Great Britain, launched in 1843 and the first
iron-hulled, propeller-driven ship to cross the Atlantic. For the route to India
and Australia, Brunel built the world’s biggest ever ship, the Great Eastern. It
was more than 200 metres in length, could carry 4000 people, and was intended to
travel from London to Sydney without needing to refuel.
In 1859, while inspecting the Great Eastern before its maiden voyage, Brunel
suffered a stroke and died a few days later. He did not live to see the ship’s
failure as a commercial venture, despite its speed and luxury. In 1864, the
Great Eastern was sold for refitting as a cable-laying ship.
Isambard Kingdom Brunel
Attempts to lay a transatlantic cable began in 1857, when USS Niagara
from the United States Navy set off from Valentia, an island off County Kerry in
south-west Ireland, bound for Trinity Bay on the coast of Newfoundland. It could
only carry half the required length of cable, with the rest aboard the
accompanying Royal Navy ship HMS Agamemnon. The two halves were to be
spliced together in mid-Atlantic, and then Agamemnon would carry the
cable to its destination.
Cable was played out from Niagara, while, from time to time, signals
were sent back along the line to test it remained intact. The cable comprised
seven copper wires covered with three coats of gutta percha, and wound with
tarred hemp and dense spirals of iron wire. Unfortunately, it snapped less than
half way across the ocean.
The same two vessels tried again a year later, this time sailing to mid-ocean
and joining their halves of the cable before returning to opposite sides of the
Atlantic. After several mishaps, the first transatlantic telegraph link was
completed in August 1858. Britain’s Queen Victoria and US President James
Buchanan used it to exchange congratulatory telegrams. However, the cable could
not transmit messages reliably and the line failed after a few weeks.
Success at last
Field did not give up. Despite delays caused by the American Civil War, he
was able to raise finance for a new attempt to span the Atlantic. This used a
much stronger cable, weighing twice as much as the earlier ones. Only one ship
was capable of carrying the entire load: the Great Eastern.
In July 1865, it left Valentia for Trinity Bay. On two occasions, it seemed
that the cable had been sabotaged by having a spike driven through it to cause a
short circuit. And after reaching three-quarters of the way to Canada, the line
Nevertheless, the attempt had demonstrated that Great Eastern could
lay a deep-sea cable, and on 13 July 1866, the huge ship left on its mission
once more. This voyage was uneventful. On 27 July, Great Eastern landed
at the tiny Canadian port of Heart’s Content. Field later wrote how sailors took
the cable ashore: "I see them now as they dragged the shore end up the beach at
Heart’s Content, hugging it in their brawny arms as if it were a shipwrecked
child whom they had rescued from the dangers of the sea."
Only four weeks later, Great Eastern returned to Heart’s Content with
a second triumph for Field. The end of the 1865 cable had been grappled from the
seabed and joined to a new section to complete another link between Ireland and
Canada. By the end of the 19th century, 15 transatlantic telegraph cables had
been laid — five of them by Great Eastern.
Question for next time
On board HMS Agamemnon and Great Eastern was the inventor of an
important piece of equipment for telegraphy. He is said to have envisioned it as
he idly twirled his monocle and observed the light patterns it caused. Who was