Transatlantic Telegraph Cable - Failure of The First Cable

Failure of The First Cable

The operation of the new cable was plagued by the fact that the two senior electrical engineers of the company had very different ideas on how the cable should be worked. Lord Kelvin and Dr Wildman Whitehouse were located at opposite ends of the cable, only communicating via the cable itself.

Kelvin, located at the western end, believed that it was only necessary to employ a low voltage and to detect the rising edge of the current flowing out of the cable and, once this had been done, nothing would be gained by further monitoring (Morse code used a positive current for a 'dot' and a negative current for a 'dash'). Kelvin invented his mirror galvanometer precisely for this task of observing the current change quickly.

At the eastern end of the cable was Whitehouse. He was the company's chief electrician and a doctor of medicine – any electrical knowledge that he possessed was self-taught. Whitehouse believed that, in order to have the current at the receiving end change as rapidly as possible, the cable should be driven from a high-voltage source (several thousand volts from induction coils). The position was made worse because every time intelligible morse was seen on the mirror galvanometer at the eastern end, Whitehouse insisted that the galvanometer be disconnected and replaced with his own patent telegraph recorder, which was far less sensitive.

The effects of the poor handling and design of the cable, coupled with Whitehouse's repeated attempts to drive the cable with high voltages, resulted in the insulation of the cable being compromised. All the while, it was taking longer and longer to send messages. Towards the end, sending half a page of message text was taking as long as a day.

In September, after several days of progressive deterioration of the insulation, the cable failed. The reaction to this news was tremendous. Some writers even hinted that the line was a mere hoax, and others pronounced it a stock exchange speculation. In the enquiry that followed, Dr Whitehouse was deemed responsible for the failure, but the company did not escape criticism for employing an electrical engineer with no recognised qualifications.

Field was undaunted by the failure. He was eager to renew the work, but the public had lost confidence in the scheme and his efforts to revive the company were futile. It was not until 1864 that, with the assistance of Thomas Brassey and John Pender, he succeeded in raising the necessary capital. The Glass, Elliot, and Gutta-Percha Companies were united to form the Telegraph Construction and Maintenance Company (Telcon, later part of BICC), which undertook to manufacture and lay the new cable. C.F. Varley replaced Whitehouse as chief electrician.

In the meantime, long cables had been submerged in the Mediterranean and the Red Sea. With this experience, an improved cable was designed. The core consisted of seven twisted strands of very pure copper weighing 300 pounds per nautical mile (73 kg/km), coated with Chatterton's compound, then covered with four layers of gutta-percha, alternating with four thin layers of the compound cementing the whole, and bringing the weight of the insulator to 400 lb/nmi (98 kg/km). This core was covered with hemp saturated in a preservative solution, and on the hemp were spirally wound eighteen single strands of high tensile steel wire produced by Webster & Horsfall Ltd of Hay Mills Birmingham, each covered with fine strands of manila yarn steeped in the preservative. The weight of the new cable was 35.75 long hundredweight (4000 lb) per nautical mile (980 kg/km), or nearly twice the weight of the old. The Haymills site successfully manufactured 30,000 miles (48,000 km) of wire (1,600 tons), made by 250 workers over eleven months.