The transatlantic telegraph cable was the first cable used for telegraph communications laid across the floor of the Atlantic Ocean. It crossed from the Telegraph Field, Foilhommerum Bay, Valentia Island, in western Ireland to Heart’s Content in eastern Newfoundland. The transatlantic cable connected North America and Europe, and expedited communication between the two. Whereas it would normally take at least ten days to deliver a message by ship, it took a matter of minutes by telegraph.
After several unsuccessful attempts, the first telegraph line across the Atlantic Ocean was completed in 1866, a feat accomplished largely through the efforts of American merchant Cyrus West Field.
The telegraph was first developed by Samuel F. B. Morse, an artist turned inventor who conceived the idea of the electric telegraph in 1832. Several European inventors had proposed such a device, but Morse worked independently and by the mid 1830s had built a working telegraph instrument. In the late 1830s, he perfected Morse Code, a set of signals that could represent language in telegraph messages. In May 1844, Morse inaugurated the world’s first commercial telegraph line with the message “What hath God wrought,” sent from the U.S. Capitol to a railroad station in Baltimore.
Within a decade, more than 20,000 miles of telegraph cable crisscrossed the country. The rapid communication it made possible greatly aided American expansion, making railroad travel safer as it provided a boost to business conducted across the great distances of a growing United States. It was Cyrus Field who took it across the Atlantic.
TAKING THE TELEGRAPH ABROAD
In 1854, Cyrus West Field conceived the idea of the telegraph cable and secured a charter to lay a well-insulated line across the floor of the Atlantic Ocean.
Obtaining the aid of British and American naval ships, he made four unsuccessful attempts, beginning in 1857. In July 1858, four British and American vessels–the Agamemnon, the Valorous, the Niagara, and the Gorgon–met in mid-ocean for the fifth attempt. On July 29, the Niagara and the Gorgon, with their load of cable, departed for Trinity Bay, Newfoundland, while the Agamemnon and the Valorous embarked for Valentia, Ireland.
By August 5, the cable had been successfully laid, stretching nearly 2,000 miles across the Atlantic at a depth often of more than two miles.
On August 16, President James Buchanan and Queen Victoria exchanged formal introductory and complimentary messages. Unfortunately, the cable proved weak and the current insufficient and by the beginning of September had ceased functioning.
Field raised new funds, made new arrangements, and a new, stronger cable was developed. The cable consisted of seven copper wires, each weighing 107 pounds per nautical mile, covered with three coats of gutta-percha (a natural rubber made from the m
ilky sap from the gutta-percha tree), weighing 261 pounds/nautical mile, and wound with tarred hemp, over which a sheath of 18 strands, each of seven iron wires, was laid in a close spiral. It weighed nearly 1.1 tons per nautical mile, was relatively flexible and able to withstand a pull of several tons.
In 1866, the first permanent telegraph line was laid across the Atlantic Ocean.
Cyrus West Field was the object of much praise on both sides of the Atlantic for his persistence in accomplishing what many thought to be an impossible undertaking. He later promoted other oceanic cables, including telegraph lines that stretched from Hawaii to Asia and Australia.
Today, transatlantic telegraph cables have been replaced by transatlantic telecommunications cables.
Editor Phil Robertson is an award-wining journalist and graphic designer. With a degree from the University of Florida’s School of Journalism, his career in journalism and publishing spans over 30 years, and includes positions as editor and publisher for several newspapers and magazines. During his career he has received a first-place award for investigative journalism from the Society of Newspaper Editors, and five ADDY awards for advertising design.
