The weight of the new cable
was 35.75 cwt. per knot, or nearly twice the weight of the old, and it
was stronger in proportion.
Ten years before, Mr. Marc Isambard Brunel, the architect of the Great
Eastern, had taken Mr. Field to Blackwall, where the leviathan was
lying, and said to him, 'There is the ship to lay the Atlantic cable.'
She was now purchased to fulfil the mission. Her immense hull was
fitted with three iron tanks for the reception of 2,300 miles of cable,
and her decks furnished with the paying-out gear. Captain (now Sir)
James Anderson, of the Cunard steamer China, a thorough seaman, was
appointed to the command, with Captain Moriarty, R.N., as chief
navigating officer. Mr. (afterwards Sir) Samuel Canning was engineer
for the contractors, the Telegraph Construction and Maintenance Company,
and Mr. de Sauty their electrician; Professor Thomson and Mr. Cromwell
Fleetwood Varley were the electricians for the Atlantic Telegraph
Company. The Press was ably represented by Dr. W. H. Russell,
correspondent of the TIMES. The Great Eastern took on board seven or
eight thousand tons of coal to feed her fires, a prodigious quantity of
stores, and a multitude of live stock which turned her decks into a
farmyard. Her crew all told numbered 500 men.
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