World of Innovation
The Ships of the Transatlantic Cable & TelegraphsThe Cable Laying Ships
USS Niagara
The USS Niagara was built and launched from the Brooklyn Navy Yard on February 23, 1855. She was a screw frigate, powered with a mixture of sail and steam powered screws (propellers). In April of 1857, she sailed to England for fit out with the equipment necessary to lay the transatlantic telegraph cable. After the first cable laying attempt failed in 1857, she returned to New York to await the second cable laying attempt. In 1858, USS Niagara sailed to Plymouth, England for fit out and cable laying experimentation with HMS Agamemnon. The second cable laying attempt was successful.
After participating in the first transatlantic telegraph cable, USS Niagara served to interrupt the Caribbean slave trade and carried Japan’s first diplomatic mission to the United States. During the American Civil War, the USS Niagara served blockading Confederate ports, and she was decommissioned and sold after the end of the war.
HMS Agamemnon
The HMS Agamemnon was ordered by the British Admiralty in 1849 to counter the French Napoléon class battleships. Although she was the first British battleship designed and built for steam power, the technology was immature and she had a full square rig on three masts.
After an early life participating in the Crimean War, in 1857 the HMS Agamemnon was fitted out to carry and lay the transatlantic cable. Working alongside the USS Niagara, the initial attempt in 1857 failed and a second attempt in 1858 was successful. After the cable laying expedition, the HMS Agamemnon served in the Caribbean and North American stations, until she was off in 1862 and sold in 1870.
SS Great Eastern [Leviathan]
The SS Great Eastern was the largest ship ever built when she was launched in 1858 (holding those records for >40 years). Her gross tonnage was not exceeded until 1901 and no ship was built exceeding her length until 1899. She was an iron sailing ship with supplemental steam powered paddle wheels and screws.
Originally designed and built as a passenger liner, the SS Great Eastern was a commercial failure but her massive size (692 ft long) gave her a second life as a cable laying ship. Unlike the smaller USS Niagara, and HMS Agamemnon, the SS Great Eastern could carry all the cable needed to cross the Atlantic by herself. After participating in laying the first Transatlantic telegraph cable, she spent years laying cables around the world. After being supplanted by purpose built cable laying ships, the SS Great Eastern was scrapped in 1889.
Morse Code
The first commercial telegraph was developed by William Forthergill Cooke and Charles Wheatstone in 1837. … Then, in 1838, Samuel Morse and his assistant, Alfred Vail, demonstrated an even more successful telegraph device which sent messages using a special code – Morse code.
Telegraph messages were sent by tapping out the code for each letter in the form of long and short signals. Short signals are referred to as dits (represented as dots). Long signals are referred to as dahs (represented as dashes). The code was converted into electrical impulses and sent over telegraph wires. A telegraph receiver on the other end of the wire converted the impulses back into to dots and dashes, and decoded the message.
In 1844, Morse demonstrated the telegraph to the United States Congress using a now famous message ‘What hath God wrought’….
One of Morse’s aims was to keep the code as short as possible, which meant the commonest letters should have the shortest codes. Morse came up with a marvellous idea. He went to his local newspaper. In those days printers made their papers by putting together individual letters (type) into a block, then covering the block with ink and pressing paper on the top. The printers kept the letters (type) in cases with each letter kept in a separate compartment. Of course, they had many more of some letters than others because they knew they needed more when they created a page of print. Morse simply counted the number of pieces of type for each letter. He found that there were more e’s than any other letter and so he gave ‘e’ the shortest code, ‘dit’. This explains why there appears to be no obvious relationship between alphabetical order and the symbols used.
The Transatlantic Cable & Chicago
Owing to the new telegraph network in the United States—and the completion of a transatlantic cable, in 1866, extending that network to Europe—the Chicago fire was, as Carl Smith writes, “the first instantaneously reported international news event, details of which reached an audience in the tens of millions while it was happening.” Such coverage brought donations pouring into Chicago from around the country. It also seeded false information, like the story about Mrs. Leary, far and wide.
