The Story of the Atlantic Cable. Sir Charles Bright
the British and United States Governments gave a subsidy, in return for free transmission of their messages, with priority over others.[11] This, however, only{40} jointly amounted to 8 per cent of the capital, and was payable only while the cable worked.[12]
The Atlantic Telegraph Company was registered on October 20, 1856, and the £350,000 decided on as the necessary capital for the work was then sought and obtained in an absolutely unprecedented fashion. There was no promotion money, no prospectus was published, no advertisements, no brokers, and no commissions, neither was there at that time any board of directors or executive officers. The election of a board was reserved for a meeting of shareholders, to be held after allotment by the provisional committee, consisting of the subscribers to the Memorandum of Association. Any remuneration to the projectors was left wholly dependent on, and subsequent to, the shareholders’ profits being over 10 per cent per annum, after which the projectors were to divide the surplus.
The campaign was opened in Liverpool, the headquarters of the “Magnetic” Company, the greater proportion of whose shareholders were business men—merchants and shipowners—mainly hailing from Liverpool, Manchester, Glasgow, and London, who appreciated the value of America being connected telegraphically with Great Britain and Europe through their Irish lines.
The first meeting of the “Atlantic” Company was convened for November 12, 1856, at the underwriters’ rooms in the Liverpool Exchange. This was called together by means of a small circular{41} on a half-sheet of note-paper, issued by Mr. E. B. Bright, manager of the “Magnetic” Company. The result was a crowded gathering composed of the wealth, enterprise, and influence of Liverpool and other important business and manufacturing centers. Similar meetings were also held in Manchester and Glasgow, and a public subscription list was opened at the “Magnetic” Company’s office of each town. In the course of a few days the entire capital was raised, by the issue of 350 shares of £1,000 each, chiefly taken up by the shareholders of the “Magnetic” Company. Mr. Cyrus Field had reserved £75,000 for American subscription, for which he signed, but his confidence in his compatriots turned out to be greatly misplaced. The result has been thus recounted by his brother: “He (Cyrus Field) thought that one-fourth of the stock should be held in this country (the United States), and he did not doubt from the eagerness with which three-fourths had been taken in England, that the remainder would be at once subscribed in America.” In point of fact, it was only after much trouble that subscribers were obtained in the States for a total of twenty-seven shares, or less than one-twelfth of the total capital. Thus, notwithstanding their professed enthusiasm, the faith of the Americans in the project proved to be strictly limited. At any rate, they did not rise to the occasion. Indeed, the undertaking was very much an affair of the Magnetic Telegraph Company, the officers of which led the shareholders to take a lively interest from the first in the Atlantic project as forming the nucleus of a great extension of business.{42}
The first meeting of shareholders took place on December 9, 1856, when a board of directors was elected. This included the late George Peabody, Samuel Gurney, T. H. Brooking, T. A. Hankey, C. M. (afterward Sir Curtis) Lampson, and Sir William Brown, of Liverpool, no less than nine (representing the interests of different towns) being also directors of the “Magnetic” Company, including Mr. J. W. Brett. The first chairman was Sir William Brown, subsequently succeeded by the Right Hon. James Stuart-Wortley, M.P. Two names may be further specially referred to as destined, in different ways, to have the greatest possible influence in the subsequent development of submarine telegraphy. Mr. (afterward Sir John) Pender, who was then a “Magnetic” director, afterward took a leading part in the vast extensions that have followed to the Mediterranean, India, China, Australasia, the Cape, and Brazil, besides several of the subsequent Atlantic lines. Up to the time of his death he was chairman of something like a dozen, more or less allied, cable companies, representing some £30,000,000 of capital, and mainly organized through his foresight and business ability. Then, again, Prof. William Thomson, of Glasgow University, was a tower of scientific strength on the Board. He had been from the outset an ardent believer in the Atlantic line. His acquisition as a director was destined to prove of vast importance in influencing the development of transoceanic communication, for his subsequent experiments on the cable during 1857-’58 led up to his invention of the mirror galvanometer and signaling instrument, whereby{43} the most attenuated currents of electricity, which are incapable of producing visible signals on other telegraphic apparatus, are so magnified by the use of a reflected beam of light as to afford signals readily legible. (A full description of this invention will be found in its proper place—farther on.)
Mr. (afterward Sir Charles) Bright was appointed engineer-in-chief, with Mr. Wildman Whitehouse (who had become closely associated with the project) as electrician, while Mr. Cyrus Field became general manager.
It must not be supposed that because the capital was raised without great difficulty, and because the project had far-seeing supporters, that there was any lack of “croakers.” On the contrary, the prejudice against the line as a “mad scheme” ran perhaps even higher than in the case of most great and novel undertakings. The critics were many, and with our present knowledge it is difficult to recognize that many of the assertions and suggestions emanated from men of science as well as from eminent engineers and sailors, who, we should say nowadays, ought to have known better. For example, the late Prof. Sir G. B. Airy, F.R.S. (Astronomer Royal), announced to the world: (1) that “it was a mathematical impossibility to submerge a cable in safety at so great a depth”; and (2) that “if it were possible, no signals could be transmitted through so great a length.”
From the very outset of the project the engineer-in-chief (as soon as appointed) had to deal with wild and undeveloped criticisms and{44} suggestions, partly from “inventors,” who desired to reap personal benefit by the scheme, and amateurs in the art generally, all of which appear singularly ludicrous nowadays.
The fallacy most frequently introduced was, perhaps, that the cable would be suspended in the water at a certain depth. Naturally the pressure increases with the depth on all sides of a cable (or anything else) in its descent through the sea, but, as practically everything on earth is more compressible than water, it is obvious that the iron wire, yarn, gutta-percha, and copper conductor, forming the cable, must be more and more compressed as they descend. Thus the cable constantly increases its density, or specific gravity, in going down, while the equal bulk of the water surrounding it continues to have, practically speaking, very nearly the same specific gravity as at the surface. Without this valuable property of water, the hydraulic press would not exist.
The strange blunder here described was participated in by some of the most distinguished naval men. As an instance, even at a comparatively recent period, Captain Marryat, R.N., the famous nautical author, writes of the sea: “What a mine of wealth must lie buried in its sands. What riches lie entangled among its rocks, or remain suspended in its unfathomable gulf, where the compressed fluid is equal in gravity to that which it encircles.”[13]
To obviate this non-existent difficulty, it was gravely proposed to festoon the cable across, at a given maximum depth between buoys and{45} floats, or even parachutes—at which ships might call, hook on, and talk telegraphically to shore!
Others again proposed to apply gummed cotton to the outside of the cable in connection with the above burying system. The idea was that the gum (or glue) would gradually dissolve and so let the cable down “quietly”!
As an example of the crude notions prevailing in the mind of one gentleman with a proposed invention, to whom was shown an inch specimen of the cable, he remarked: “Now I understand how you stow it away on board. You cut it up into bits beforehand, and then join up the pieces as you lay.”
Some again absolutely went so far as to take out patents for converting the laying vessel into a huge factory, with a view to making the cable on board in one continuous length, and submerging it during the process!
Finally, one naval expert assured the company that “no other machinery for paying out was necessary than a handspike to stop the egress of the cable.{46}”
CHAPTER II
THE MANUFACTURE OF THE LINE