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CYRUS WEST FIELD

STORY OF THE ATLANTIC CABLE

[Address of Cyrus W. Field, projector of the ocean telegraph (born in Stockbridge, Mass., November 30, 1819; died in New York City, July 12, 1892), delivered at a banquet given in his honor by the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York, November 15, 1866, in commemoration of the final completion and successful working of the Atlantic cables.]

MR. PRESIDENT:-I thank you for the kind words which you have spoken; and you, gentlemen, for the manner in which you have responded to them. It is pleasant to come home after a long absence and especially when a warm welcome meets us at the door. It is pleasant to see familiar faces and hear familiar voices; to be among old neighbors and friends and to be assured of their regard and approbation. And now to receive such a tribute as this from the Chamber of Commerce of New York and from this large array of merchants and bankers and eminent citizens is very grateful to my heart.

The scene before me awakens mingled recollections. Eight years ago the Atlantic telegraph had won brief success; and in this very hall we met to celebrate our victory. Alas for our hopes! How soon was our joy turned into mourning. That very day the cable departed this life. It went out like a spark in the mighty waters. So suddenly it died that many could not believe that it ever lived. To-night we meet to rejoice in a success which I believe will be permanent. But many who were with us then are not here. Captain Hudson has gone to his grave. Woodhouse, the English engineer who was with our own Everett in the "Niagara," sleeps in his native island.

Others who took an early part in the work are no more among the living. Lieutenant Berryman, who made the first soundings across the Atlantic, died for his country in the late war on board his ship off Pensacola. His companions, Lieutenant Strain, the hero of the ill-fated Darien expedition, and Lieutenant Thomas both are gone. So are John W. Brett, my first associate in England; Samuel Statham, Sir William Brown, the first chairman of the Atlantic Telegraph Company, and many, many others. My first thought to-night is of the dead; and my only sorrow that those who labored so faithfully with us are not here now to share our triumph.

In the letter inviting me to accept of this banquet, you expressed a wish "to hear from my lips the story of this great undertaking." That, sir, would be a very long story, much beyond your patience and my strength. I should have to take you forty times across the Atlantic and half as many to Newfoundland. Still, I will endeavor in a brief way to give you some faint outlines of the fortunes of this enterprise.

It is nearly thirteen years since half a dozen gentlemen of this city met at my house for four successive evenings and around a table covered with maps and charts and plans and estimates, considered a project to extend a line of telegraph from Nova Scotia to St. John's, in Newfoundland, thence to be carried across the ocean. It was a very pretty plan on paper. There was New York and there was St. John's, only about twelve hundred miles apart. It was easy to draw a line from one point to the other-making no account of the forests and mountains and swamps and rivers and gulfs that lay in our way. Not one of us had ever seen the country or had any idea of the obstacles to be overcome. We thought we could build the line in a few months. It took two years and a half. Yet we never asked for help outside our own little circle. Indeed, I fear we should not have got it if we had, for few had any faith in our scheme. Every dollar came out of our own pockets. Yet I am proud to say no man drew back. No man proved a deserter; those who came first into the work have stood by it to the end. Of those six men four are here to-night; Mr. Peter Cooper, Moses Taylor, Marshall O. Roberts, and myself. [Ap

plause.] My brother Dudley is in Europe and Mr. Chandler White died in 1856 and his place was supplied by Mr. Wilson G. Hunt, who is also here. Mr. Robert W. Lowber was our Secretary. To these gentlemen as my associates it is but just that I should pay my first acknowledgments.

From this statement you will perceive that in the beginning this was wholly an American enterprise. [Applause.] It was begun and for two years and a half was carried on solely by American capital. Our brethren across the sea did not even know what we were doing away in the forests of Newfoundland. Our little company raised and expended over a million and a quarter of dollars before the Englishmen paid a single pound sterling. [Cheers.] Our only support outside was in the liberal charter and steady friendship of the Government of Newfoundland for which we were greatly indebted to Mr. E. M. Archibald, then attorney-general of that colony, and now British consul in New York. And in preparing for an ocean cable, the first soundings across the Atlantic were made by American officers in American ships. [Applause.] Our scientific men-Morse, Henry, Bache, and Maury-had taken great interest in the subject. The United States ship "Dolphin" discovered the telegraph plateau as early as 1853; and the United States ship Arctic" sounded across from Newfoundland to Ireland in 1856, a year before Her Majesty's ship "Cyclops," under command of Captain Dayman, went over the same course. This I state not to take aught from the just praise of England but simply to vindicate the truth of history.

It was not till 1856-ten years ago that the enterprise had any existence in England. In that summer I went to London and there with Mr. John W. Brett, Mr. (now Sir) Charles Bright, and Dr. Whitehouse organized the Atlantic Telegraph Company. Science had begun to contemplate the possibility of such an enterprise; and the great Faraday cheered us with his lofty enthusiasm. Then, for the first time, was enlisted the support of English capitalists; and then the British Government began that generous course which it has continued ever sinceoffering us ships to complete soundings across the Atlantic and to assist in laying the cable, and an annual subsidy

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