Volta
Science27 July 1866

The Transatlantic Telegraph Cable

The giant steamship Great Eastern laid a submarine cable from Ireland to Newfoundland, giving Europe and America their first lasting telegraph link.

The Great Eastern off Heart’s Content, preparing to land the cable (28 July 1866)
The Great Eastern off Heart’s Content, preparing to land the cable (28 July 1866)

Henry Clifford · Public domain · Source

The first transatlantic cable, laid in 1858, failed within weeks, and in 1865 another attempt ended when the cable broke in mid-ocean. In 1866 the businessman Cyrus Field’s company loaded the cable onto the largest ship in the world, the Great Eastern, which left Valentia Island in Ireland on 13 July. On 27 July the cable came ashore at Heart’s Content in Newfoundland, and this time it held. In September the 1865 cable, lost at sea, was grappled up and completed too, making two lines.

News that had taken more than ten days by ship now crossed the Atlantic in minutes. In Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas Jules Verne had the Nautilus follow this cable along the sea floor.

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The map in 1866

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States at the time
Great Britain
Places
Valentia Island

Before and after

Earlier
1866 General Sherman Incident
Later
1869 First Transcontinental Railroad

Themes that include this event

  • Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas1702 – 1958

    Jules Verne’s novel of Captain Nemo’s submarine Nautilus circling the world beneath the sea — the treasure ships of Vigo Bay, La Pérouse’s wrecks, the giant squid and the Atlantic cable behind it, and the people who really reached the South Pole and passed under the North Pole after the novel went there first