Great Fortunes: Cyrus W. Field Part 9
After shipping the cable, the squadron sailed from Plymouth on the 29th of May, 1868, for the Bay of Biscay, where the cable was subjected to numerous and thorough tests, which demonstrated its strength and its sensitiveness to the electric current. This accomplished, the vessels returned to Plymouth.
“Among the matters of personal solicitude and anxiety at this time, next to the success of the expedition, was Mr. Field himself. He was working with an activity which was unnatural—which could only be kept up by great excitement, and which involved the most serious danger. The strain on the man was more than the strain on the cable, and we were in fear that both would break together. Often he had no sleep, except such as he caught flying on the railway. Indeed, when we remonstrated, he said he could rest better there than anywhere else, for then he was not tormented with the thought of any thing undone. For the time being he could do no more; and then, putting his head in the cushioned corner of the carriage, he got an hour or two of broken sleep.
“Of this activity we had an instance while in Plymouth. The ships were then lying in the Sound, only waiting orders from the Admiralty to go to sea; but some business required one of the directors to go to Paris, and, as usual, it fell upon him. He left on Sunday night, and went to Bristol, and thence, by the first morning train, to London. Monday he was busy all day, and that night went to Paris. Tuesday, another busy day, and that night back to London. Wednesday, occupied every minute till the departure of the Great Western train. That night back to Plymouth. Thursday morning on board the ‘Niagara,’ and immediately the squadron sailed.”
The plan of operations this time was for the vessels to proceed to a given point in mid-ocean, and there unite the two ends of the cable, after which the “Niagara” should proceed toward Newfoundland and the “Agamemnon” toward Ireland, and it was supposed that each vessel would make land about the same time. This was believed to be a better plan than the one pursued in the first expedition.
The squadron sailed from Plymouth on the 10th of June. The weather was favorable for the first two or three clays of the voyage, but on the 13th a severe gale set in, which lasted for over a week, and came near causing the “Agamemnon” to founder beneath her immense load, a portion of which broke loose in her hold. All the vessels succeeded in weathering the storm, however, and on the 25th reached the rendezvous in mid-ocean. The next day the splice was made, and the ships set out for their respective destinations. Before they had gone three miles the machinery of the “Niagara” caught the cable and broke it. A second splice was made, but when each ship had paid out about forty miles, the electric current suddenly ceased. The cable was cut promptly, and the two vessels at once returned to the rendezvous, where they rejoined each other on the 28th. A comparison of the logs of the two ships “showed the painful and mysterious fact that at the same second of time each vessel discovered that a total fracture had taken place, at a distance of certainly not less than ten miles from each ship, in fact, as well as can be judged, at the bottom of the ocean.” A third splice was made without delay, and the two ships again set out for the opposite shores of the Atlantic. This time about two hundred miles of the cable were successfully laid, when it parted about twenty feet from the stern of the “Agamemnon.” The “Niagara,” being unable to communicate with the English frigate, bore away for Queenstown, where she was joined a few days later by the “Agamemnon.”
