A Thread Across the Ocean: The Heroic Story of the Transatlantic Cable by John Steele Gordon

A Thread Across the Ocean: The Heroic Story of the Transatlantic Cable by John Steele Gordon

Author:John Steele Gordon [Gordon, John Steele]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780060524463
Google: kc-MPwAACAAJ
Amazon: 0060524464
Publisher: Paw Prints
Published: 2003-07-02T03:00:00+00:00


8. Lightning Through Deep Waters

ONCE THE AGAMEMNON RETURNED to Queenstown, Field, Thomson, and Bright left immediately for London to meet with the board of directors of the Atlantic Telegraph Company. The news of the second failure had, of course, reached London ahead of them. The board, which had been in high hopes in the spring, was now sunk in gloom and defeat. Henry Field, who undoubtedly heard directly from his brother, reported that "the feeling— to call it by the mildest name—was one of extreme discouragement. They looked blankly in each other's faces. With some, the feeling was one almost of despair."1

The chairman of the board, Sir William Brown, a prominent Liverpool merchant deeply involved in transatlantic trade and founder of the great banking house of Brown, Shipley, had been unable to attend the board meeting in London, but he sent a downbeat message. "We must all deeply regret our misfortune," he wrote, "in not being able to lay the cable. I think there is nothing to be done but dispose of what is left on the best terms we can."2 He then wanted to pay the bills, distribute what was left over to the stockholders, and liquidate the corporation.

Field protested this unbridled pessimism but found diat it was seconded by the vice chairman of the board, T. H. Brooking, who was present and who had until this last setback been among the enterprise's most ardent supporters. He announced that he was "determined to take no further part in an undertaking which had proved hopeless, and to persist in which seemed mere rashness and folly."3 Brooking then walked out of the meeting and sent in his resignation the next day, as did Brown.

Field, staggered by these defections, addressed the rest of the board and called on all his considerable ability as a salesman to persuade them to carry on for one more try. He pointed out that while three hundred miles of cable had been lost in the most recent expedition, enough still remained to do the job. He also pointed out that the ships and crews were in Queenstown, the cable loaded. They needed only coal and supplies and some repairs to the battered Agamemnon to be ready for another attempt. Bright and Thomson backed him strongly, pointing out that valuable experience had been gained from the previous failures, making success more probable this time.

Realizing that there was little to lose, except a couple of thousand miles of submarine telegraph cable of dubious resale value, the board went along with Field and his technical staff Field and Samuel Gurney, a board member, then went immediately to the admiralty and orders were telegraphed to the cable fleet to get ready to sail as soon as possible. Field, Thomson, and Bright returned to Queenstown, and on Saturday, July 17, the fleet sailed out of the Cove of Cork to try once more.

This time there were no cheers from shore. Indeed, as Nicholas Woods of The Times of London noted, "There was



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