Volume 101 Number 2, 2008 Issue #429

The laying of the Atlantic cable was the greatest engineering feat of the 19th century. It was also a landmark event in the history of communications, beginning the rapid flow of information between continents that would eventually circle the globe. For Newfoundland the initial cable of 1858, though short-lived, brought a degree of international stature to a colony riding a wave of nationalism in the early years of responsible government. Preparatory work for the cable, begun by Frederic Gisborne and handed off to Cyrus Field, has its elements of courage, daring and intrigue. The relationship between the two protagonists - the British idealist on the one hand and the American entrepreneur on the other - deteriorated into a stand-off and swirl of controversy as the project came to completion. In the pages of the St. John's press, the force of personalities at times eclipsed the significance of the event itself.

The success of Samuel F. B. Morse's electric telegraph in 1844 soon prompted thinking about a telegraphic link between Europe and North America. Morse himself had raised the prospect of an Atlantic cable as early as 1843. A few years later John Brett, a retired London antiques dealer who with his brother Jacob installed the first submarine cable between Dover and Calais, France, went so far as to charter a company for the express purpose of laying a cable across the Atlantic. In Newfoundland, Bishop John T. Mullock, writing in The Morning Courier of St. John's in November 1850, mused, "I hope the day is not too far distant when St. John's will be the first link in the electric chain which will unite the Old World and the New."

It fell to Frederic Newton Gisborne to lay the groundwork for one of the milestones of the century. A dilettante, tinkerer and promoter, Gisborne was born into an upper-class Lancashire family in 1824 (his mother was a descendent of Sir Isaac Newton). He was tutored in mathematics, electricity, botany and civil engineering, and as a young man set out to see the world on a tour that took him to Central and South America and the South Pacific. He and his brother ended up in Quebec in 1845 where they began farming but were soon drawn to the exciting new world of telegraphy.

Gisborne's early education had prepared him well and he became associated with the British North America Electric Telegraph Association, put together to build a line between Quebec and the Maritime provinces. To that end, he traveled to Nova Scotia in the winter of 1848 seeking the backing of the local authorities. His return trek on snowshoes, dragging a loaded toboggan through the rugged mountains of Gaspé, won the admiration of his associates for his courage and extraordinary physical stamina in the wild.

The following year Gisborne moved to Nova Scotia to become superintendent of the telegraph. Before long, however, his thoughts turned toward Europe, or at least to Newfoundland. Perhaps influenced by Bishop Mullock's musings, he fixed on the idea of a telegraph linking St. John's, the closest seaport to Europe, with eastern North America. Establishing St. John's as the first port of call for ships crossing the Atlantic could cut the two-week communication time between London and New York by two days, a significant improvement in a world now hungry for up-to-date information.

Gisborne's plan was to build a telegraph line from St. John's to Cape Ray, then ferry messages to Cape Breton by boat or carrier pigeon. With news of the Bretts' English Channel cable, however, a submarine cable across the Cabot Strait became a workable alternative.

Gisborne came to St. John's in late 1850 and generated considerable interest in his scheme to make the colony the point of connection for transatlantic communication. He, in turn, was captivated by the island and puzzled by the prevailing opinion on the mainland picturing it as a place of backwardness and desolation good only for codfish. His wider worldview showed him a land of vast natural resources whose inhospitable shores shielded behind them "as warm-hearted and intelligent a population as ever breathed." Gisborne resigned his position with the Nova Scotia government and, with a young wife in tow, took up residence in St. John's in the summer of 1851.

Frederic N. Gisborne (1824-1862) Courtesy Victoria University Library (Toronto)

His first venture was to build a telegraph line from St. John's to Carbonear. That project underway, he left in the fall to survey the 400-mile route to Cape Ray. It was a grueling two-month journey across the south coast of the island, detouring around long steep-sided inlets, hampered by inaccurate charts and cold wet weather. Living for days on a subsistence diet of bread and tea, the expedition tested even Gisborne's prowess. His party of six deserted him, to be replaced by four Indians (likely from the Mi'kmaq settlement at Conne River) better suited to the rigors of the expedition. Slogging 10 to 12 miles a day when the weather allowed, the Indians were awestruck at Gisborne's determination. Before long two of them turned back. One of the two who completed the trek died within a few days and the other never fully recovered from the experience.

The survey complete, Gisborne took but a short pause in St. John's before heading to the United States in search of financial backing for the telegraph. In New York, he met investors Darius B. Holbrook and Horace B. Tebbets, head of a steamship company, who saw an opportunity in a transatlantic service calling at St. John's. The two offered financial support and Gisborne set off for England to consult with John Brett on an undersea cable between Newfoundland and Cape Breton. Brett also offered to invest, and was eager to talk about a partnership for a transatlantic cable. Gisborne, however, wanted to complete the Newfoundland line before tackling the Atlantic. Returning to St. John's, he chartered the Newfoundland Electric Telegraph Company with exclusive rights to build and operate a trans-island telegraph. The Nova Scotia government put an exorbitant price on landing rights for a cable from Newfoundland, so Gisborne decided to bypass them with a route to New Brunswick via Prince Edward Island. He completed the 10-mile section from PE.1. to New Brunswick toward the end of 1852, the first working submarine cable in North America.

Back in Newfoundland the following year, Gisborne organized a crew to begin work on the line across the island. By June they were clearing a bridle path, building bridges and digging a trench for the telegraph wire, which was to run underground. A few weeks struggling with the rocky terrain killed that idea in favour of a conventional pole line.

Unfortunately, Gisborne, while sharp on telegraphy and a superb outdoorsman, was naïve and none too practical when it came to matters of business. In August the project came to an abrupt halt when his New York backers stopped honouring his payment requests. Only 40 miles of line had been completed, the workers were clamouring for their wages and suppliers were demanding to be paid. His funds exhausted, Gisborne suffered the humiliation of having his personal property seized. He was placed under arrest and it was only the intervention of two acquaintances from P.E.I. in arranging bail that spared him a prison term. In the midst of the chaos, he suffered the sudden death of his wife, leaving two small children in his care.

Despite the setbacks, in January 1854 he departed again for New York to find new capital. He was convinced he had a viable project, and John Brett was still holding out the promise of a partnership in an Atlantic cable. All Gisborne needed was someone to help him pull it off. That someone was Cyrus Field.

Bright, ambitious, and possessed of a restless energy, Cyrus West Field grew up in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, one of eight sons of David Dudley Field, a well-regarded Congregational minister. By any measure he came from an extraordinary family with five sons going on to achieve distinction in law, politics, engineering and the ministry.

Cyrus, born in 1819, shunned the halls of higher learning for a career in business, making his way at the age of 16 to the financial and business capital of America, New York City. He worked his way into ownership of a wholesale paper business and made it hugely successful. Within a decade he counted himself among the wealthiest men in New York.

In 1853, still only 33 years old, Field placed his business in the hands of his brother-in-law and prepared for a life of semi-retirement. All that changed, however, when he met Frederic Gisborne, after a chance encounter with brother Matthew Field, the engineer of the family, in February 1854, brought Gisborne to Cyrus Field's swank New York townhouse. After hearing what Gisborne had to say, Field was not at first enthusiastic about investing in a telegraph link between St. John's and the rest of North America. Cyrus Field's brother Henry, author of an early history of the transatlantic cable, related that it was only when Gisborne left, and Field looked up Newfoundland's position on the globe, that he saw how close it was to Britain and was struck with the concept of a cable extending across the Atlantic. The anecdote is entrenched in cable history, crediting Field with the initial idea as well as its execution.

Gisborne remembered it differently.

According to him, the two openly discussed a transatlantic cable. D. J. Henderson of St. John's, also present at the meeting, later recalled that Gisborne, in pitching his case, produced a map tracing a proposed cable route between Newfoundland and Ireland. "Ah," said Field, "that puts a different complexion on the whole thing."

Indeed it did, and Field moved quickly to put the idea into action. He assembled a group of New York investors, all men of wealth and influence, and in March 1854 formed the New York, Newfoundland, and London Telegraph Company, with Gisborne as Chief Engineer. Gisborne and Field set out for St. John's, accompanied by brother David Dudley Field, who acted as the company's legal advisor, and one of the investors, Chandler White. They arrived on March 22 after a storm-tossed, stomach-churning passage from Halifax. Cyrus Field, prone to seasickness, was more than a little the worse for wear.

The Legislative Assembly of Newfoundland, about to introduce responsible government to the colony, was quick to respond to interest from outside promoters. In a matter of days they agreed to the company's terms: guaranteed interest on a £250,000 bond for 20 years, no duty on the import of wires and cables, £5,000 for road construction, a grant of 50 square miles of land upon completion of the telegraph to the mainland, a further 50 square miles upon completion of an Atlantic telegraph, and, most critically, a 50-year monopoly on telegraphic communication in the colony.

Cyrus W. Field (1819-1892)

The Americans paid Gisborne $40,000 for his company's assets, assumed its $50,000 debt and took charge. They settled the wages of the workers from the year before, and that summer geared up again with a crew of 600. Chandler White moved to St. John's as the company's managing director. Gisborne, relieved of his debt and his company, was shunted aside. He did not get along with White, who ignored his well-laid plans and advice as Chief Engineer, and he resigned. Matthew Field took over construction of the telegraph line. It was hard going, even for an experienced engineer, and the costs escalated wildly. The following spring Cyrus Field, with his characteristic impatience, wanted to know how many more months it would take to finish the line. "How many months?" replied Matthew Field. "Let's say how many years!"

The company pushed ahead, meanwhile, with an undersea cable to the mainland. By now the Nova Scotia government had come to terms, and Aspee Bay at the northern tip of Cape Breton was chosen as the landing point. With cable-laying technology still in its infancy, this phase of the project started out badly. Cyrus Field was in a hurry to get started and engaged the 500-ton brig Sarah L. Bryant to transport the cable from England to Newfoundland. However, cable laying could not be accomplished under sail power alone, so Field chartered the steamer James Adger from New York to tow the Sarah L. Bryant across the 55 miles of the Cabot Strait as she put down the cable.

By August 1855 all was ready and the James Adger left New York with Cyrus Field and other principals of the New York, Newfoundland and London Telegraph Company on board. Many of them brought their families along. To promote the event, Field also invited an assortment of friends, luminaries and newspaper reporters, including Samuel Morse, giving the expedition the atmosphere of a grand sea cruise. Coming into Port aux Basques, the troupe found that the Sarah L. Bryant was yet to arrive from England. Off they went on a side trip to St. John's, where the company had men at work deepening the passage into the harbour to accommodate the transatlantic ships which would be bringing their messages to North America. The arrival of a shipload of tourists — and some famous ones at that — was a notable event for the old city and they were given the royal treatment: four days of hastily-arranged outings and socials, including a ball in their honour at the new Colonial Building.

The Americans were quite taken by the hospitality of the Newfoundlanders and no less so by the number of Newfoundland dogs they saw roaming the streets. They left with 20 of them on board, on their way to new homes in the United States. The dogs came in handy back at Cape Ray where Samuel Canning, the engineer in charge, was making preparations to secure the Newfoundland end of the cable. In trying to land a supply of lumber to build a telegraph shack, much of it broke free in the crashing surf. Over the side went the Newfoundland retrievers. Working individually and in pairs, the dogs delighted their owners as they brought each and every board ashore.

But the cable-laying operation was a disaster. The Sarah L. Bryant had no sooner started paying out the cable than she was struck broadside by the steamer. The towing resumed, James Adger's captain took her way off course, then overcorrected, and failed to adjust his speed to the brig. As a result, the excess weight of cable dragged the Sarah L. Bryant down in the stern. When the weather turned foul, with force winds and a rising sea, there was no choice but to cut the cable and abandon the project.

The steamer Propontis laid the Cabot Strait cable with no partying the following summer. Meanwhile, construction of the trans-island line was far behind schedule. Matthew Field had been replaced as engineer in charge, but almost two-thirds of the line was left to be completed. The man for the job was Frederic Gisborne. On Cyrus Field's offer to involve him in promoting the transatlantic cable in England, Gisborne accepted a reappointment as Chief Engineer in early 1856. By October the line was finished.

The New York, Newfoundland, and London Telegraph Company now had a telegraph link from St. John's to New York. They had also spent a lot of money. In fact, their original capital of $1.5 million was almost exhausted and they had yet to face the real challenge of spanning the Atlantic. Cyrus Field again snubbed Gisborne, starting for England on his own. Here John Brett opened doors for him and, along with engineer Charles T. Bright, and a former surgeon and self-made electrician Edward Wildman Whitehouse, they set up the Atlantic Telegraph Company to raise the necessary financing. For their board of directors they recruited a number of prominent businessmen along with William Thomson, a brilliant Glasgow physicist and mathematician and leading authority on electrical theory. Their initial share issue raised £350,000, the equivalent of US$1,750,000.

The British government came onside, offering to provide naval assistance for a new survey of the ocean floor and, if called on, to lay the cable itself. Just as important, they committed £14,000 annually for priority use of the cable once it became operational. A weary Cyrus Field returned to New York to spend Christmas with his family, but at the last minute it dawned on him that Atlantic Telegraph had not secured cable-landing rights in Newfoundland. He made a quick dash to St. John's where his whirlwind schedule caught up with him and he dropped from exhaustion. Ordered to bed by his doctor, he instead caught the next steamer back to New York. A winter of intense lobbying lay ahead to win the support of the U. S. Congress for what was now essentially a British project. The politics were touch and go, but legislation creating a 25-year subsidy for the cable service squeaked through the Senate with a one-vote majority.

Meanwhile, disgusted with his treatment by Cyrus Field, Gisborne turned his back on telegraphy, later writing "under the guise of friendship and esteem [Field] has been my worst enemy." While in England he remarried and returned to Newfoundland in the spring of 1857 to take up mineral exploration. His contribution to telegraphy, however, was not lost on the Newfoundlanders, who within weeks of his arrival in St. John's organized a public dinner in his honour. "To his fertile mind, physical activity, indomitable perseverance, we owe the agency of electricity in our internal as well as foreign associations," wrote The Public Ledger.

Back in England the factory machines were humming, turning out the 2,500 miles of cable needed for the summer expedition. The cable design had a strand of seven fine copper wires at its core, surrounded by three layers of gutta-percha, the new wonder material pliable under normal temperatures but forming a hard, efficient insulator in cold water. The outside was wrapped with treated hemp and wound with an armour of iron wires, each of seven strands; the whole then coated with a layer of tar producing a cable just over half an inch in diameter.

There was no ship large enough to carry its entire length, so when the time came it was loaded in two sections on the 5,200-ton USS Niagara and the 3,500-ton HMS Agamemnon. On August 6, 1857 the specially-prepared shore section of the cable, heavily armoured for protection against the rocky bottom and ships' anchors, was brought ashore from the Niagara at Valentia Island in County Kerry, Ireland and the two ships with a 3-ship squadron departed for Newfoundland. Samuel Canning had selected Bay of Bulls Arm (now Bull Arm) as the landing site where a new telegraph house awaited their arrival. Other preparations were also underway. The trans-island line, built in sections under three different overseers, was giving trouble. The whole length was inspected and portions renewed by Alexander M. Mackay, a Nova Scotian hired by Cyrus Field as superintendent of the New York, Newfoundland and London Telegraph Company. In St. John's expectations ran high and a committee laid plans for a public rally and official welcome on the arrival of the telegraph fleet.

All through August they waited, not knowing that the expedition had gone awry. On August 11, with 380 miles of cable on the ocean floor behind the Niagara, the mechanic tending the paying-out equipment applied the brakes in error and the cable snapped. There was no way to retrieve it from a depth of 12,000 feet; the voyage ended and the fleet returned to Britain. News of the expedition's collapse reached St. John's on August 27.

The telegraph house, Trinity Bay

Gisborne, now in the position of Colonial Telegraph Engineer in Newfoundland, had predicted the failure. He contacted Atlantic Telegraph to offer his services, proposing that if appointed Chief Engineer with full powers he would submit a plan for laying the cable and be prepared to forfeit £1,000 if it failed. His proposition was ignored.

Two more attempts in 1858, when the ships were pounded by fierce mid-Atlantic storms, also ended with fatal breaks in the cable. After the second failure, Cyrus Field traveled to London to meet with the directors of Atlantic Telegraph. The atmosphere hung heavy with disappointment and despair. The Chairman and Vice-Chairman proposed that they dispense with the project and wind up the corporation. Both resigned from the board. Field, just hit with the bankruptcy of his own business, needed all his resolve to convince the others to make another try. The company still had enough cable to do the job, and eventually the other directors agreed to support him in one more attempt.

The Agamemnon and the Niagara set out again in July 1858. This time they rendezvoused and spliced the cable at mid-Atlantic. The Agamemnon headed back to Ireland and the Niagara, with Cyrus Field on board, set course for Newfoundland, both ships paying out the cable. The two kept in constant communication and despite periods of lost signals, damaged cable, false compass readings, and fuel shortages this time there were no breaks in the line. Both ships approached their destinations within hours of each other. In the soft summer afternoon of August 4, 1858 the three-masted Niagara steamed into Trinity Bay. Cruising at three miles an hour, flanked by HMS Gorgon, she met up with HMS Porcupine, sent ahead to survey the approach to the landing site. Slowly and carefully she payed out the cable that now spanned almost 2,000 miles of ocean floor.

Cyrus Field, edgy as ever, could not wait for the Niagara to reach shore. He transferred to the Gorgon and went on ahead, landing at 2am and striking out for the telegraph station about a half-mile from the beach. Here he found a group of young men housed in a substantial building and roughing it in the wild. Field roused them from their sleep with word that the cable was laid. However there was no operator among them to send out the news. He was forced to cool his heels while two of the workers set off for the next station some 15 miles away at Black River (near present-day Swift Current) carrying a dispatch to the Associated Press in New York.

Meanwhile, the Niagara had dropped anchor at the bottom of Bull Arm and her crew were coiling the remaining cable, some one and a half miles long, into a landing boat. By 5:45am the cable was on the beach and men from the Gorgon and Porcupine converged on the site. Sailors and officers alike pitched in to form a procession carrying the tar-covered cable, grasping it in their bare hands and dragging it inland over the rough bridle path to the telegraph house. Once there, the end was hooked up to the receiving instrument, and clear signals from Valentia were confirmed. Outside, the men stood around quietly as Captain W. Hudson of the Niagara gave a brief address and a prayer of thanks. Back at the beach they could contain themselves no longer, and in the words of John Mullaly, the self-styled historian of the expedition, raised their cheers as "one wild prolonged shout of delirious joy" that rang through the desolate hills of Bull Arm.

Interior of the telegraph house, Trinity Bay

Newfoundland and America celebrated the news of the cable landing. Jubilation was the order of the day. Coming through the narrows to St. John's on Monday evening August 9 en route to New York, the Niagara and Gorgon were greeted by the sound of guns firing and church bells ringing. Public buildings, banks and numerous private residences were illuminated and people thronged the streets as a surge of excitement ran through the city. The following evening Cyrus Field and the ships' officers were entertained at dinner by Governor Bannerman and feted at a public ball in the Colonial Building. Captain Hudson of the Niagara commented: "Newfoundland took the first part in it, and Great Britain and America joined her, and now she is the very heart and focus through which their current of union runs — truly a proud position..."

Cyrus Field arrived in New York to a hero's welcome. Two days of festivities included a parade up Broadway, with Field beaming and bowing from the mayor's carriage. The whole city partied and couples danced to the latest popular tune: The Atlantic Telegraph Polka.

Back in Newfoundland, though, there was something missing in all the hoopla, and that was the recognition of Frederic Gisborne's pioneering contribution. The St. John's press took up his cause, publishing correspondence between him and John Brett that clearly anticipated an ocean telegraph long before Field's involvement. The Public Ledger, while acknowledging that "it would be unjust and ungenerous to detract one iota" from the honour belonging to Cyrus Field, proclaimed: "The paternity of this great work belongs to FREDERICK N. GISBORNE, Esq., whose claims in this respect have been so fully borne out long since that a repetition now is needless."

Debate on Gisborne's role reached the New York papers, where there was no inclination to assign credit but to one of their own. The principals of the New York, Newfoundland and London Telegraph Company, in defending their claim to the project, argued rather lamely that the charter of Gisborne's original Newfoundland Electric Telegraph Company made no reference to an Atlantic cable. St. John's continued to champion Gisborne, condemning the "manifest untruth" foisted upon the world by "the Yankee Cyrus" to further his own ends.

In the meantime, after some initial testing and instrument adjustments, the cable was ready to accept business on August 16. Official messages were exchanged between Queen Victoria and U.S. President James Buchanan, followed by several hundred dispatches over the next two weeks, but the service was not working well. At both ends, transmission was slow and incoming signals were weak and hard to interpret. On September 2, less than a month after the cable landed, and the very day that Field was honoured at a grand banquet in New York, Bull Arm received its last legible message. After a further six weeks of static the line went dead.

What caused the cable to fail? Field's impulsiveness in getting the project underway undoubtedly led to some hasty preparations, and there were inherent defects in the cable stemming from shoddy manufacturing and storage. However, subsequent investigation focused on Atlantic's chief electrician Wildman Whitehouse, whose renegade actions in this instance added credence to his name. Will Thomson had demonstrated that signals could be driven through the length of the cable by applying only a small amount of voltage. Whitehouse, with a lesser grasp of electrical principles and a blustery, pig-headed disposition insisted that stronger signals required higher voltage. He set up a series of huge induction coils at Valentia capable of generating as much as 2,000 volts, and as the signals weakened applied more and more power. An official inquiry concluded that his transmissions were powerful enough to burn through the insulation and short out the cable.

In America, Cyrus Field, having taken a credit, now shouldered all the blame. Accusations flew that the whole cable project was a fraud; that Field had faked the messages just to profit from the sale of his shares. The fact that he had sold just one share in the company — and that at a loss — made no difference. Opinion went against him; friends and business associates who had made him the man of the hour only a month before turned their backs.

It would take him years to restore public confidence in himself and the idea of a transatlantic cable. But Cyrus Field was nothing if not persistent. His lasting moment of triumph came on July 27, 1866 when the SS Great Eastern arrived at Heart's Content bearing a cable from Valentia that would indeed change the world.

Ted Rowe lives in St. John's. His book on the history of the Heart's Content Cable Station is coming from Creative Book Publishers in 2009.