Robert Michael Ballantyne - The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables

If a speck of fire had been seen to glide through the key-hole of the powder-magazine it could scarcely have created greater consternation than did the disappearance of that light! The commotion in the testing-room spread instantly to every part of the ship; the whole staff of electricians was at once roused, and soon afterwards the engines of the Great Eastern were slowed and stopped, while, with bated breath and anxious looks, men whispered to each other that there was “a fault in the cable.”

A fault! If the cable had committed a mortal sin they could scarcely have looked more horrified. Nevertheless there was ground for anxiety, for this fault, as in moral faults, indicated something that might end in destruction.

After testing the cable for some time by signalling to the shore, Monsieur de Sauty concluded that the fault was of a serious character, and orders were at once given to prepare the picking-up apparatus at the bow for the purpose of drawing the cable back into the ship until the defective portion should be reached and cut out.

“O what a pity!” sighed Robin, when he understood what was going to be done, and the feeling, if not the words, was shared by every one on board with more or less intelligence and intensity; but there were veterans of submarine telegraphy who spoke encouragingly and treated the incident as a comparatively small matter.

Two men-of-war, the Terrible and the Sphinx, had been appointed to accompany and aid the Great Eastern on her important mission. A gun was fired and signals were made to acquaint these with what had occurred while the fires were being got up in the boilers of the picking-up machinery.

Electricians as well as doctors differ, it would seem, among themselves, for despite their skill and experience there was great difference of opinion in the minds of those on board the big ship as to the place where the fault lay. Some thought it was near the shore, and probably at the splice of the shore-end with the main cable. Others calculated, from the indications given by the tests, that it was perhaps twenty or forty or sixty miles astern. One of the scientific gentlemen held that it was not very far from the ship, while another gentleman, who was said to be much experienced in “fault”-finding, asserted that it was not more than nine or ten miles astern.

While the doctors were thus differing, the practical engineers were busy making the needful preparations for picking-up—an operation involving great risk of breaking the cable, and requiring the utmost delicacy of treatment, as may be easily understood, for, while the cable is being payed out the strain on it is comparatively small, whereas when it is being picked up, there is not only the extra strain caused by stoppage, and afterwards by hauling in, but there is the risk of sudden risings of the ship’s stern on the ocean swell, which might at any moment snap the thin line like a piece of packthread.

The first difficulty and the great danger was to pass the cable from the stern to the bow, and to turn the ship round, so as to enable them to steam up to the cable while hauling it in. Iron chains were lashed firmly to the cable at the stern, and secured to a wire-rope carried round the outside of the ship to the picking-up apparatus at the bows. The cable was down in 400 fathoms of water when the paying-out ceased, and nice management was required to keep the ship steady, as she had now no steerage-way; and oh! with what intense interest and curiosity and wonder did Robin Wright regard the varied and wonderful mechanical appliances with which the whole affair was accomplished!

Then the cable was cut, and, with its shackles and chains, allowed to go plump into the sea. Robin’s heart and soul seemed to go along with it, for, not expecting the event, he fancied it was lost for ever.

“Gone!” he exclaimed, with a look of horror.

“Not quite,” said Jim Slagg, who stood at Robin’s elbow regarding the operations with a quiet look of intelligence. “Don’t you see, Robin, that a wire-rope fit a’most to hold the big ship herself is holdin’ on to it.”

“Of course; how stupid I am!” said Robin, with a great sigh of relief; “I see it now, going round to the bows.”

At first the rope was let run, to ease the strain while the ship swung round; then it was brought in over the pulley at the bow, the paddles moved, and the return towards Ireland was begun. The strain, although great, was far from the breaking-point, but the speed was very slow—not more than a mile an hour being considered safe in the process of picking-up.

“Patience, Robin,” observed Mr Smith, as he passed on his way to the cabin, “is a virtue much needed in the laying of cables. We have now commenced a voyage at the rate of one mile an hour, which will not terminate till we get back to Owld Ireland, unless we find the fault.”

Patience, however, was not destined to be so severely tried. All that day and all night the slow process went on. Meanwhile—as the cable was not absolutely unworkable, despite the fault—the chief engineer, Mr Canning, sent a message to Mr Glass in Ireland, asking him to send out the Hawk steamer, in order that he might return in her to search for the defect in the shore-end of the cable, for if that were found he purposed sacrificing the eighty odd miles already laid down, making a new splice with the shore-end, and starting afresh. A reply was received from Mr Glass, saying that the Hawk would be sent out immediately.

Accordingly, about daybreak of the 25th the Hawk appeared, but her services were not required, for, about nine that morning, when the cable was coming slowly in and being carefully examined foot by foot—nay, inch by inch—the fault was discovered, and joy took the place of anxiety. Ten and a quarter miles of cable had been picked up when the fault came inboard, and a strange unaccountable fault it turned out to be—namely, a small piece of wire which had been forced through the covering of the cable into the gutta-percha so as to injure, but not quite to destroy, the insulation. How such a piece of wire could have got into the tank was a mystery, but the general impression was that it had been carried there by accident and forced into the coil by the pressure of the paying-out machinery as the cable flew through the jockey-wheels.

Signals were at once made to the fleet that the enemy had been discovered. Congratulatory signals were returned. The fault was cut out and a new splice made. The Hawk was sent home again. The big ship’s bow was turned once more to the west, and the rattling of the machinery, as the restored and revived cable passed over the stern, went merrily as a marriage bell.

The detention had been only about twelve hours; the great work was going on again as favourably as before the mishap occurred, and about half a mile had been payed out, when—blackness of despair—the electric current suddenly ceased, and communication with the shore was ended altogether.

That man who can appreciate the feelings of one who has become suddenly bankrupt may understand the mental condition of those on board the Great Eastern when they were thus tossed from the pinnacle of joyous hope to the depths of dark despair. It was not, however, absolute despair. The cable was utterly useless indeed—insensate—but it was not broken. There was still the blessed possibility of picking it up and bringing it to life again.

That, however, was scarcely an appreciable comfort at the moment, and little could be seen or heard on board the Great Eastern save elongated faces and gloomy forebodings.

Ebenezer Smith and his confrères worked in the testing-room like Trojans. They connected and disconnected; they put in stops and took them out; they intensified currents to the extent of their anxieties they reduced them to the measure of their despair—nothing would do. The cable was apparently dead. In these circumstances picking-up was the only resource, and the apparatus for that purpose was again rigged up in the bows.