Pod Insights Throughline The Internet Under the Sea About this episode What powers the global internet? The answer might surprise you: not satellites, but hundreds of thin cables that run along the ocean floor. They’re an absolutely essential technology that’s also incredibly fragile — so fragile that in the beginning, most people thought they couldn't possibly work. Today on the show: the story of a man who did think they could work… and the lengths he went to to try and connect the world.
Guests:
Bill Burns, former BBC broadcast engineer and founder of atlantic-cable.com
Cyrus Field IV, great-great-grandson of Cyrus Field
Allison Marsh, professor at the University of South Carolina and historian of technology
Ben Roberts, strategic advisor on Subsea Cable Economics for Connectivity at UNICEF who has been building cable network in Africa for the past two decades
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Transcript 7,303 words · 24 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Speaker 00 This message comes from the Southern Environmental Law Center. No one voted for dirty air and water. That's why S E L C is fighting back to defend the healthy environment everyone depends on. Because it's not political, it's fundamental. Learn more at S E L C dot org.
0:37 Speaker 01 On the evening of February 18th, 2024, two ballistic missiles were fired at the Rubimar, a massive cargo ship that's longer than the Washington Monument.
0:49 Speaker 02 It was just the latest series of attacks by the Houthis, an Iranian-backed rebel group operating in Yemen that's been firing on commercial ships in the Red Sea.
0:58 Speaker 01 The Houthis were trying to disrupt trade in the Red Sea, one of the busiest shipping routes in the world.
1:04 Speaker 03 It's a passage between continents. That reduces the time that it takes a ship to travel from Europe to Asia considerably. So for the Red Sea, a huge amount of freight is traveling that way.
1:17 Speaker 01 Dozens of ships pass through these waters daily, along with billions of dollars' worth of cargo. And the Rubimar was one of those ships.
1:43 Speaker 03 And the crew abandoned ship, dropped anchor, because they were abandoning ship, and then the ship drifted around on its own.
1:50 Speaker 01 Being pushed around aimlessly by sea currents and wind.
2:12 Speaker 01 Then, less than a week later, at the bottom of the Red Sea, something broke.
2:26 Speaker 03 Internet traffic that is going from Europe to Asia, cut.
2:36 Speaker 03 And then also, the other place that was impacted was Europe to Africa, to the east coast of Africa.
2:40 Speaker 04 In this presentation, I dug into the numbers, and as you can see here.
2:46 Speaker 04 Joey, it looks like it froze.
2:53 Speaker 01 In the span of minutes, millions of people from Kenya and Uganda, all the way to Vietnam and Singapore, had their internet disrupted. Close to three-quarters of the internet data flow was interrupted between Europe and Asia.
3:10 Speaker 03 It was unclear as to what had happened, straight away.
3:16 Speaker 01 But after a few days, it did become clear.
3:24 Speaker 03 Three physical cables, they were all cut around the same time, very shortly afterwards, within minutes of each other.
3:36 Speaker 01 The undersea cables that carry all that internet traffic had been cut.
3:42 Speaker 03 It seems that the anchor that had been dropped must have cut the cables. You know, the weight of the ship would just cause that anchor to plow through the cable. It would drift along, find another cable, cut that, and then cut another one.
3:55 Speaker 01 Okay, right now, you might be thinking, wait a minute. I thought internet connections happened over satellites. In fact, almost all intercontinental internet traffic, the overseas connections that let us do things like make payments, watch movies, or FaceTime our friends, actually go through cables that run along the ocean floor.
4:18 Speaker 03 The internet relies upon these subsea cables ultimately, so the whole thing to work as a global network, global system.
4:27 Speaker 01 If you were to look at a world map overlaid with these cables, it looks kind of like a messy connect-the-dots picture with cables crossing every major ocean. And if you took all the cables in the world and connected them, it could wrap around the Earth 36 times. But these cables go largely unnoticed because we can't see most of them.
4:50 Speaker 03 Those fiber optic cables are actually extremely fragile. My name is Ben Roberts.
4:56 Speaker 01 Ben has been building cable networks in Africa for the past two decades.
5:01 Speaker 03 They're about the thickness, just slightly more than a human hair. So they're very, very small. In the deep ocean, it can be maybe the diameter of a dime coin, you know?
5:12 Speaker 01 Out of the 600-some cables that exist, two to four of them break every week. And it doesn't take much to break them. It could be as simple as a fisherman's boat anchor accidentally severing one, or it could be an intentional sabotage. Either way, it's hard to tell, especially when these cuts happen in the depths of the ocean.
5:37 Speaker 05 A cargo ship lingered off Taiwan's coast for days, ignoring repeated calls from the coast guard. Then a vital undersea cable went dark.
5:46 Speaker 06 Weeks ago, two data cables were also cut, one between Finland and Germany and another between Lithuania and Sweden.
5:52 Speaker 07 European Union says the suspected culprit vessel is part of Russia's so-called "shadow fleet" of oil tankers.
6:00 Speaker 05 Prosecutors charged the ship's captain, a Chinese national, with damaging critical infrastructure near Taiwan's southwestern coast.
6:07 Speaker 08 NATO's mission, Baltic Sentry, is a rapid response to an escalating new threat: multiple cables cut in recent months.
6:17 Speaker 09 It's part of what I would just call the invisible infrastructure.
6:21 Speaker 01 These cables are an absolute essential technology that are also incredibly fragile. So fragile that in the beginning, not many people thought it would actually ever work.
6:36 Speaker 01 I'm Ramtin Arablouei. Coming up, the story of a man who did think it could work and the lengths he went to to try to connect the world.
6:53 Speaker 10 This is Gisele from Portland, Oregon, and you're listening to Throughline on NPR. And we recently discovered the show, but it has quickly become my favorite podcast. In these difficult political times, I'm just so grateful for the show and the context that it gives to really complex contemporary issues. It's a good reminder that nothing exists in a vacuum. So thanks.
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7:37 Speaker 11 This message comes from Live Right, publishers of John U. Bacon's New York Times bestseller, The Gales of November, a chronicle of the S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald's 1975 shipwreck. The Gales of November in paperback wherever books are sold.
7:54 Speaker 00 This message comes from Sony Pictures Classics, proudly presenting the acclaimed new crime thriller, The Only Living Pickpocket in New York. The Daily Beast raves, "A perfect crime film." John Turturro gives a career-best performance. Also starring Giancarlo Esposito, Tatiana Maslany, Will Price, and Steve Buscemi. See the film that the L.A. Times calls "Instantly Classic." Opens only in theaters October 23 in New York and Los Angeles. Nationwide, October 30.
8:22 Speaker 12 Part One, The Cable Cabinet.
8:29 Speaker 01 January 1854, New York City.
8:55 Speaker 09 You know, 1850s, you're really getting into sort of peak industrial age.
8:59 Speaker 01 Trains and steamboats transformed how people traveled, did business, and communicated.
9:09 Speaker 09 We start having, you know, telegraph. Your messages can get places further as long as they are already connected.
9:17 Speaker 01 This is Allison Marsh. She's a professor at the University of South Carolina and a historian of technology.
9:24 Speaker 09 So everything's changing right before your eyes. However, to get a message across the ocean, it would still be by ship. That would be the fastest.
9:37 Speaker 09 So that's not exactly speed mail in any way.
9:41 Speaker 01 Let's say you wanted to send a letter across the Atlantic Ocean, say, from London.
9:46 Speaker 13 So if you wanted to get a message to New York, you put it on the mail ship.
9:50 Speaker 01 This is Bill Burns.
9:52 Speaker 13 I'm a former BBC broadcast engineer.
9:55 Speaker 01 And he's the founder of the website Atlantic-Cable.com, which is a deep dive, so to speak, on the first transatlantic cable.
10:04 Speaker 13 And usually about two weeks to New York and then two weeks back again.
10:08 Speaker 01 It's like if you texted a friend, "Hey, you want to get dinner?" And then had to wait a whole month for their reply.
10:16 Speaker 01 One month, just for one exchange. But that would all change because of one bored and wealthy man, Cyrus Field.
10:28 Speaker 14 I gather he was about 5'9", which may have been on the slightly tall side. Also estimated 140 pounds or so. My name is Cyrus W. Field IV.
10:43 Speaker 01 Yes, Cyrus Field IV. He is the great-great-grandson of the first Cyrus Field that we're talking about.
10:51 Speaker 14 He was described as wiry, and he apparently talked super fast as well. President Lincoln apparently couldn't understand him in person very well and told him, "I don't understand you. Send me a telegram."
11:06 Speaker 13 Cyrus was born in 1819 in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and he was the son of a clergyman, a minister.
11:13 Speaker 14 Apparently fire and brimstone, kinda no fun, part of that puritanical work ethic. And that had a big influence on him.
11:23 Speaker 09 He's one of many, many children.
11:27 Speaker 14 He was extremely squirmy and always running around, very high energy. He was bright, he was good at math. At age 12, he started keeping the family books, running the finances for the family. And he was the only boy in that family that didn't go to college.
11:50 Speaker 09 And then he's trying to figure out what he wants to do with his life.
11:58 Speaker 13 So he left home at age 15, and I think he moved to New York with $8 in his pocket, which you could live on for a little bit in Manhattan at that time, but not an awful lot.
12:08 Speaker 09 And becomes an apprentice in a mercantile shop.
12:11 Speaker 14 And initially an errand boy and worked his way up.
12:16 Speaker 01 Cyrus would later move on to work at a paper company.
12:20 Speaker 13 And he became a partner in that company. And unfortunately, it went bankrupt. And he ended up in charge of things. He negotiated on the debt to get it canceled or paid off as far as possible. And then he started his own paper business.
12:34 Speaker 14 And the timing was great. Stationery had just become a big deal and people were mailing letters and envelopes. Companies were issuing bonds and wanted to do it on fine paper. And his business just absolutely took off.
12:56 Speaker 09 He makes a fortune. He makes a quarter of a million dollars by the time he's 34. I still think a quarter of a million dollars is a lot of money today. Imagine what that is, you know, 150 years ago.
13:08 Speaker 01 It's the equivalent of about $10 million today.
13:11 Speaker 09 He is loaded.
13:13 Speaker 13 And just to give you an idea of his character, when he was successful, he went back to all of those creditors who had no claim on him personally.
13:22 Speaker 14 And he paid them in full with interest. And that really helped cement his reputation. And that helped him greatly going forward. And during this time, he married, started a family. And apparently, he worked all the time except on Sundays. But it took a toll on his health. And after something like 14 years, I guess, in the paper business, his doctor told him he needed to retire, which he did. And was apparently kind of bored.
13:56 Speaker 01 Until the day a stranger came knocking at his door.
14:02 Speaker 15 Mr. Gisborne left Halifax and came to New York in January 1854.
14:09 Speaker 01 On a cold winter evening, Cyrus opens the door to find a man named Frederick Gisborne, who came all the way from Canada looking for help. Gisborne was an engineer, who was leading a project to build a telegraph cable line from the island of Newfoundland in the most eastern part of Canada to the North American mainland. The hope was that this cable would move messages more quickly than a ship making the same trip. But his investors abandoned him, and he was left holding the bag along with a debt that would have been about $2 million today.
14:46 Speaker 13 So Gisborne runs out of money, comes down to New York looking for investors.
14:50 Speaker 01 And so it happens that Cyrus's brother, who is also an engineer living in New York, bumps into Gisborne in the hotel lobby, hears his sad story, and tells Gisborne to go see Cyrus.
15:04 Speaker 13 Finds Cyrus, goes to his house, talks to Cyrus, tells him his plan.
15:10 Speaker 15 Accordingly, he came and spent an evening describing the route of his proposed telegraph and the points it was to connect.
15:19 Speaker 14 And the story goes that he wasn't terribly impressed with that idea.
15:24 Speaker 01 But there was something about it that got Cyrus's wheels turning.
15:28 Speaker 15 After he left, Mr. Field took the globe which was standing in the library and began to turn it over.
15:36 Speaker 13 And he had a big floor globe, which is now in the Smithsonian. And Cyrus says, well, you know, if we're going to have a connection to Newfoundland, why couldn't we just extend it across the Atlantic?
15:46 Speaker 15 It was while dust studying the globe that the idea first occurred to him, that the telegraph might be carried further still and be made to span the Atlantic Ocean.
15:59 Speaker 13 And so Cy looks at his globe and says, why don't we do a cable?
16:03 Speaker 14 Let's take it all the way.
16:07 Speaker 01 Cyrus wasn't meant for the couch potato life. And this project could not have gotten him out of that retirement slump faster. Because this transatlantic cable idea was bigger than big. Over 2,000 miles long, in fact. It had never been done before and nobody had ever even attempted to. But if this idea was possible, it would be weeks faster than having a mail ship cross the Atlantic. Also, the US could have closer ties to foreign governments. Business overseas could be conducted at a much greater speed. In Cyrus's eyes, the possibilities were incredible.
16:46 Speaker 14 He really thought this would help prevent wars from breaking out. You know, taking two weeks to get a message back and forth from the old world to the new world. And and how that delay could cause misunderstandings, mistakes, that sort of thing.
17:00 Speaker 01 It also didn't hurt that it had money making potential.
17:04 Speaker 09 Depending on if you could get information faster about anything from a crop failure or a shipwreck, a loss of a market, a, you know, a famine somewhere or drought elsewhere. There's always the more information you have as a merchant, as someone who's trading, the better equipped you are to make better decisions faster. And the faster you are, the more likely you are to be able to make more money.
17:36 Speaker 01 But Cyrus might have underestimated the scope of the project.
17:40 Speaker 14 And I think that's one of the characteristics of someone that takes on a project like this. They're a little naive in terms of what's actually involved.
17:51 Speaker 01 And right from the start, the odds were stacked against Cyrus.
18:00 Speaker 15 Could a cable be stretched across the ocean? The first was a question of mechanical difficulties. The second problem was purely scientific, involving questions as to the laws of electricity, not then fully understood, and on which the boldest might feel that he was venturing on uncertain ground.
18:23 Speaker 01 This is from a book account, the story of The Atlantic Telegraph, that was written by Cyrus's younger brother, Henry Field.
18:32 Speaker 09 We don't really entirely know how all of electricity works yet. There are not yet colleges of electrical engineering. That's not going to exist for another couple of decades. And so we don't even have the terminology that we use. Like, there was calling something a volt or an amp. Those terms aren't even in use yet. So we don't have the formulas or the theorems to know what's happening. So there are different ideas, and they basically have to be tested.
19:02 Speaker 01 The idea was to have a cable line that would connect from the west coast of Ireland all the way to Newfoundland in Canada. From there, telegraph landlines would carry messages on to major cities like New York and London.
19:19 Speaker 01 There were a handful of undersea cable lines that existed at this time, but they were at a much smaller scale. None of them were crossing entire ocean spans. And of course, Cyrus, who has decided to embark on this impossible project, has zero experience with cables.
19:37 Speaker 13 Now Cyrus is not technical, he's in the paper business, manufacturing and distribution and sales. But he's not technical at all. But he has friends who are, like Samuel Morse, for example.
19:46 Speaker 01 No big deal. Just the inventor of the revolutionary telegraph and the Morse code.
19:51 Speaker 14 And he talked to Samuel Morse to find out, hey, do you think a electric wire would work over 1,700 miles? And he came back in the affirmative. And with that, with his energy and time and money, he went all in on this.
20:14 Speaker 01 Cyrus would go on and stake a big part of his own fortune into the project. But he was still going to need a lot more money.
20:23 Speaker 13 So now Cyrus is, having done quite well in New York, he'd met all the rich people, you know, industrialists in New York. So he rounds with his friends, says, who wants to come into this amazing new scheme? And Cyrus got his buddies together and known as the Cable Cabinet.
20:37 Speaker 01 The Cable Cabinet. And Cyrus also made trips to England and got some investors there as well. So Cyrus is raising money. He's recruiting experts on his team, figuring out the cable tech side of things. And now he has to sell his plan to both the US and the British governments.
20:56 Speaker 09 He is talking about creating a direct line of communications between the two continents. I mean, think about it as like the red phone in the Oval Office today. Pick it up and talk to other world leaders. I mean, this is the same idea just 150 years earlier.
21:15 Speaker 01 The Brits were all in on this plan. Because let's not forget, this was during the ascendance of the British Empire, where they had colonies all over the world. So of course, they would want to have faster lines of communication.
21:29 Speaker 13 And then they went to the American government and they said, well, you know, the British government is supporting us and that will mean they have priority on the cable when it's laid. And of course, the American government somewhat reluctantly said, all right, well, I suppose we'd better pony up two.
21:43 Speaker 01 Both governments gave Field some money for the plan, along with two massive warships, the Agamemnon from the British and the Niagara from the US. This would be a crucial part of the plan as no single ship could carry the weight of 2,000 miles' worth of cables. Okay, so imagine spools of thread that are taller than you and wound not with string, but with 2,000 miles of cables that could fill entire rooms. It would take at least 30 men to coil cables onto a ship at any given moment.
22:16 Speaker 13 And it's a copper wire with seven strands that is surrounded by gutter percha, which is a tree resin, and then surrounding that is iron wire stranded around it for strength and protection.
22:28 Speaker 01 The whole thing was around 5/8 of an inch in diameter. That's smaller than a dime. And the plan is to drop it all 12,000 feet down to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.
22:40 Speaker 13 And that's it. That's how cables are laid, exactly the same today.
22:44 Speaker 01 How much would this have cost?
22:46 Speaker 13 Oh, the equivalent of 100 million today, perhaps.
22:51 Speaker 09 Other historians have compared it to the Apollo missions of going to the moon. I mean, that's the same idea of doing something that is, in some ways, so far-fetched, so unbelievable.
23:03 Speaker 01 Which only added to the hype.
23:05 Speaker 07 The grandest work which has ever been attempted by the genius and enterprise of man, the New York Herald.
23:13 Speaker 01 Newspapers all around the country and in England were covering the project, and a lot of people were hopeful about it.
23:20 Speaker 16 If you wished to communicate some piece of intelligence straight away to your relatives across the wide world of waters, if you wished to tell those whom you know it would interest in their heart of hearts of a birth, or a marriage, or alas, a death among you, the little cord which we have now hauled up to the shore will impact that tidings quicker than the flash of the lightning.
23:51 Speaker 01 It was hard to believe that this little cord was even possible, but Cyrus Field was going to try to stretch this cable and bring the world into a new reality.
24:05 Speaker 01 Cyrus and his cable cabinet make all the necessary preparations: crew members, machinery, food and water for the journey.
24:13 Speaker 13 So they make the cable, they've got the two ships and they're ready to lay it.
24:18 Speaker 01 But with a project like this at this scale, disaster can come as quickly as the wind changes direction.
24:26 Speaker 15 Such were the two elements or forces of nature to be encountered: the ocean and the electric current. Could they be controlled by any power of man? Was it possible to combat the fierceness of the winds and waves and to stretch one long line from continent to continent? And then, after the work was achieved, would the lightning run along the ocean bed from shore to shore? Such were the questions which had puzzled many an anxious brain and which now troubled the one who was to undertake the work.
25:09 Speaker 01 Coming up, all hands on deck.
25:23 Speaker 17 Hey, this is Niall Segundo. I messed up. Let's do it from the south. Hey, this is Niall Segundo from Philadelphia. You're listening to Throughline from NPR and Go Birds.
25:41 Speaker 11 Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors.
25:45 Speaker 00 This message comes from Prolon with their five-day fasting mimicking diet, a clinically developed nutrition program with the goal of promoting fat loss while protecting lean body mass. Learn more at prolonlife.com/NPR.
25:59 Speaker 11 This message comes from Liv Right, publishers of John U. Bacon's New York Times bestseller, The Gales of November, a chronicle of the S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald's 1975 shipwreck. The Gales of November in paperback wherever books are sold.
26:15 Speaker 00 This message comes from Sony Pictures Classics, proudly presenting the acclaimed new crime thriller, The Only Living Pickpocket in New York. The Daily Beast raves, "A perfect crime film." John Turturro gives a career-best performance. Also starring Giancarlo Esposito, Tatiana Maslany, Will Price, and Steve Buscemi. See the film that the LA Times calls "instantly classic." Opens only in theaters October 23 in New York and Los Angeles. Nationwide, October 30.
26:43 Speaker 12 Part Two: The strain on the cable, the strain on the man.
26:58 Speaker 18 On the evening of the seventh instant, paying out of the cable from the Niagara progressed satisfactorily.
27:04 Speaker 13 So here we are in the summer of 1857.
27:07 Speaker 18 By the noon of the eighth, we had paid out 40 miles of cable.
27:12 Speaker 09 They say, "Okay, we're gonna start in Ireland and just go straight across."
27:16 Speaker 01 The plan was for the Niagara to lay its 1,000 miles, then meet the Agamemnon in the middle of the ocean, splice the cables together, and let the second ship finish laying the rest.
27:27 Speaker 18 At noon on the 10th, we had paid out 255 miles of cable.
27:33 Speaker 01 This is an account from an engineer who worked on the project and was on board that first ship.
27:39 Speaker 18 At this time, we experienced an increasing swell, followed later in the day by a strong breeze.
27:47 Speaker 01 And let's not forget, they're not laying down a cable in some lake. We're talking about the Atlantic Ocean.
27:54 Speaker 13 It can be very rough water, so which is why you're late in the middle of the summer, around July and August, when you hope that it's temperate, you're not going to get hit by an iceberg, and there aren't too many storms coming through. You could have a hurricane come through, of course.
28:08 Speaker 09 Remember, this is the 19th century. We don't have satellite weather telling us where the hurricane is going to go.
28:22 Speaker 18 Shortly after this, the speed of the cable gained considerably on that of the ship.
28:29 Speaker 01 As the cable was unspooling, the wind was picking up and the sea was getting rougher, which pulled at the cable, causing it to unwind faster.
28:38 Speaker 15 The cable was running out freely at the rate of six miles an hour, while the ship was advancing but about four.
28:50 Speaker 18 In proceeding to the fore part of the ship,
28:55 Speaker 18 I heard the machine stop. I immediately called out to relieve the brakes.
29:00 Speaker 15 The stern of the ship was down in the trough of the sea, and as it rose upward on the swell,
29:07 Speaker 15 the tension was too great.
29:13 Speaker 18 When I reached the spot, the cable was broken.
29:18 Speaker 15 And the cable parted.
29:23 Speaker 15 One who was present wrote, "The unbidden tear started to many a manly eye. The interest taken in the enterprise by all, everyone, officers and men, exceeded anything I ever saw, and there is no wonder that there should have been so much emotion at our failure."
29:44 Speaker 13 They ran into problems with their machinery. They got about 350 miles out from Ireland, and they lost the end of the cable in much deeper water, and they could not recover the cable. And the problem was then, they really had very little slack on the cable, not enough to replace 350 miles that was lost.
30:05 Speaker 13 So they gave up for the year.
30:08 Speaker 09 They have to turn around and go back and say, uh, yeah, sorry, guys. We lost all your cable and all of your money and all of your investment. Let's do it again. And so, you know, Lucky Fields is a very, very persuasive person.
30:22 Speaker 19 Do not think that I feel discouraged or am in low spirits, for I am not. All the officers and men on board of the Telegraph Fleet seem to take the greatest interest in our enterprise and are very desirous to go out in the ships the next time.
30:38 Speaker 01 Cyrus and his team basically go back to the drawing board.
30:43 Speaker 13 They say to cable company, can you make us another cable? And they said, sure thing. Have you got the cash?
30:48 Speaker 01 Cyrus does have the cash, but that's only because he and his team had to go back out and raise money again.
30:54 Speaker 13 And they made them another cable.
30:56 Speaker 01 A new and improved cable. They also came up with a different game plan for laying it.
31:02 Speaker 13 This time they decided to start in the middle of the ocean with both ships. So they both sailed out from Ireland and met in the middle of the ocean and spliced the two ends of the cable together.
31:13 Speaker 01 Then the two ships would both sail away from each other, one heading towards Newfoundland and the other to Ireland.
31:21 Speaker 13 And they could talk to each other over the cable by Morse code on the way.
31:26 Speaker 01 So a year after the first try, they make a second one, and the pressure was on, especially for Cyrus.
31:35 Speaker 15 The strain on the man was more than the strain on the cable, and we were in fear that both would break together.
31:45 Speaker 01 The cable had to work.
31:52 Speaker 15 It was the 10th day of June that the expedition left England with fair skies and bright prospects.
31:59 Speaker 09 Beautiful weather, looks great. Yeah, not too soon after that.
32:04 Speaker 15 On Sunday, it began to blow.
32:09 Speaker 01 A massive storm falls upon the two warships.
32:14 Speaker 15 Up to this time, the Niagara and the Agamemnon had managed to keep in sight of each other. And now, from the deck of the former, the latter was seen a mile and a half distant, rolling heavily in the sea.
32:28 Speaker 18 Three or four gigantic waves were seen approaching the ship, coming slowly on through the mist, nearer and nearer.
32:37 Speaker 18 The Agamemnon rose heavily to the first, and then went down quickly into the deep trough of the sea.
32:54 Speaker 13 It doesn't quite capsize. Its timbers are creaking, its planks are opening up, the coals are shifting in the hull, the cable is uncoiling itself and getting tangled.
33:04 Speaker 15 But all things have an end. And this long gale at last blew itself out, and the weary ocean rocked itself to rest.
33:20 Speaker 13 Everybody survives miraculously.
33:22 Speaker 01 And they actually tried to pick up where they left off, but they can't do it. The cables have suffered too much damage.
33:29 Speaker 09 There's no one who's going to be communicating on this, and so they finally give up, turn around and head home, and they have to regroup again.
33:41 Speaker 01 And no one probably had a heavier heart than Cyrus.
33:45 Speaker 19 When I thought of all that we had passed through, of the hopes thus far disappointed, of the friends saddened by our reverses, of the few that remain to sustain us, I felt a load at my heart almost too heavy to bear.
34:01 Speaker 13 He kept a bold face on board because he sailed the expeditions, but people that knew him well said he was really upset about it. But he just would not give up.
34:13 Speaker 09 I mean, I think we've all met those people who have those egos and those ideas, and they're like, "Yeah, nothing is going to stop me."
34:26 Speaker 09 You have to have that absolute utter belief in yourself and in the technology that this is going to succeed.
34:37 Speaker 13 There are literally hundreds of newspaper stories about it in Britain and all over the USA.
34:43 Speaker 07 And so, the great cable on which the hopes of two worlds rested has broken for the second time. We trust the next attempt will achieve the grand object.
34:56 Speaker 13 And they're generally enthusiastic. They understand it's a new project of unknown complexity and they're prepared to cut the cable company quite a lot of slack.
35:05 Speaker 01 Meanwhile, Cyrus appeals to his investors to give him one more chance. They still had the ships, they still had enough cable, and things had been going smoothly until that storm rolled through.
35:16 Speaker 15 And it was voted to make one more trial before the project was finally abandoned. Even though the chances were 100 to 1 against them, that one might bring them success.
35:32 Speaker 01 And just a month later, Cyrus and the two warships were back at sea.
35:37 Speaker 13 And they start again in the middle, and they sail out to both ends.
35:41 Speaker 01 They both reach the starting point and start laying down the cables. A day passes, then two.
35:48 Speaker 09 The line unreeled neatly without incident, at least not major incident.
36:01 Speaker 13 They both land at about the same time, the Agamemnon in Valencia in Ireland and the Niagara in Bebel Arm off Trinity Bay in Newfoundland. And they land the cables and they start sending signals.
36:24 Speaker 01 They had done it.
36:26 Speaker 09 The final attempt, the third attempt, yes, it succeeded. They got it, you know, third time the charm.
36:35 Speaker 09 The official inauguration happens between Queen Victoria and President Buchanan. And so that's like the official first message. The Queen desires to congratulate the president upon the successful completion of this great international work in which the Queen has taken the greatest
36:52 Speaker 01 It's 102 words.
36:54 Speaker 09 And it takes almost 16 hours to send.
36:58 Speaker 01 But 16 hours is way better than two weeks.
37:04 Speaker 01 And when Cyrus gets back to NYC, he gets a hero's welcome.
37:11 Speaker 13 They have a big celebration in Manhattan with fireworks and parades and everything.
37:16 Speaker 09 The church bells are ringing. They have a firework display that was so big and wonderful that it actually sets the Dome of City Hall on fire. Same type of reactions are happening over in England.
37:30 Speaker 14 He was awarded all sorts of medals and prizes.
37:34 Speaker 01 And the cable starts to deliver on its promise. Hundreds of messages go back and forth.
37:44 Speaker 14 But during that month of the celebration, there was, there were problems with the cable and it wasn't working that great.
37:54 Speaker 14 And in the height of the celebrations.
38:00 Speaker 09 After only a few weeks, the, the cable just stops working altogether.
38:07 Speaker 13 And they try and send out repair ships from Ireland and they can't find the location of the problem.
38:19 Speaker 15 That first cable was thenceforth to sleep forever silent in its ocean grave. Years of labor and millions of capital were swept away in an hour into the bosom of the pitiless sea.
38:39 Speaker 14 And the public and everyone turned against the project. They claimed it was all a stock fraud, that he had just done this to make money and that it was all a house of cards.
38:54 Speaker 13 And now the angry letters to the New York Times start appearing. Was the Atlantic cable a humbug? It was the term at the time, a humbug, you know, fake news. And they're saying, well, did the cable ever work?
39:05 Speaker 09 And lots of people just began to think that this is a big hoax.
39:10 Speaker 13 And Cyrus Field is roundly condemned.
39:14 Speaker 14 At that point, the public attitude, as well as the government, turned against them.
39:20 Speaker 13 So now we're in an unfortunate position where they've spent all the money. Investors are not particularly interested at this point.
39:27 Speaker 01 But Cyrus isn't finished yet. That's coming up.
39:41 Speaker 20 This is Kendra from Cleveland. You're listening to Throughline from NPR.
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40:06 Speaker 11 This message comes from Live Right, publisher of John U. Bacon's New York Times bestseller, The Gales of November, a chronicle of the S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald's 1975 shipwreck. Never has it been told better than by Mr. Bacon in this colorful book, writes John J. Miller of The Wall Street Journal, while author Hampton Sides proclaims it's destined to be a classic. The Gales of November, now in paperback.
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40:59 Speaker 12 Part Three: The Age Wonder of the World.
41:05 Speaker 21 Come, listen all unto my song. It is no silly fable. 'Tis all about the mighty cord they call the Atlantic Cable. Bold Cyrus Field, he said, says he I have a pretty notion that I can run a telegraph across the Atlantic Ocean.
41:24 Speaker 01 It had been several years since the first transatlantic cable failed in 1858. And Cyrus Field wouldn't let it go.
41:32 Speaker 19 I can hardly keep the business of the Atlantic Telegraph Company out of my mind for a single moment.
41:39 Speaker 01 In the early 1860s, an investigation concluded that it was possible to lay a new cable. And this new cable was going to be stronger and more durable than the last one. Meanwhile, other cables were being laid around the world, but none of them crossed the Atlantic. It was just too big of a challenge. But when Cyrus went looking for investors to redeem himself, he had trouble finding them in the US because of the Civil War.
42:07 Speaker 19 The whole country is in such a state of excitement in regard to the war that it is almost impossible to get anyone to talk for a single moment about telegraph matters.
42:17 Speaker 01 So Cyrus turned to the British, who were interested in how the cable could help them power their colonies. He found a sympathetic ear from British businessmen. And by 1865, Cyrus had again found his investors. He had the technology... And they also had the ship. The Great Eastern.
42:41 Speaker 14 And it was apparently five times bigger than any other ship that floated at that time.
42:47 Speaker 13 That was the largest ship ever built, and it was intended to be a major passenger ship, launched on the Thames in London. They had to launch it sideways. It was so big it would have run into the bank on the other side if they'd launched it in the traditional way. All sorts of problems building it. It was a commercial failure. It had been mothballed. It was sold at auction for £25,000, when it had cost £100,000 to build.
43:10 Speaker 01 But Cyrus Field saw the Great Eastern and said, "That's my boat."
43:25 Speaker 01 114 sheep, 20 pigs, 29 geese, 14 turkeys, a milk cow, and 500 other fowl. This is what the 500-man crew brought on board the ship for food in July of 1865, when Cyrus Field launched another expedition to lay a new cable. Cyrus, remember, wasn't an engineer. He didn't know much about sailing. But he was nothing if not persistent. And once again, he put everything he had into this.
44:04 Speaker 13 Gray's Eastern then sails out of the Thames, round the south coast of England, round the south coast of Ireland.
44:09 Speaker 22 As the sun set, a broad stream of golden light was thrown across the smooth billows towards their bows, as if to indicate and illumine the path marked out by the hand of heaven.
44:26 Speaker 01 They let one reporter aboard the ship, William Howard Russell of The Times of London.
44:33 Speaker 13 They sail up to Valencia, up the west coast of Ireland. Now we're ready to lay the cable.
44:40 Speaker 01 Again, the men laid cable westward across the Atlantic, testing the signal every half hour to make sure it was working. When they found problems, they spent hours pulling up the cable and fixing it. And again,
44:55 Speaker 01 the cable snapped.
45:04 Speaker 13 And they lose the end of the cable at that point in 12,000 feet of water.
45:08 Speaker 01 Cyrus's lip quivered and his cheek blanched.
45:13 Speaker 19 The cable has parted and gone overboard.
45:17 Speaker 22 There around us lay the placid Atlantic, smiling in the sun, and not a dimple to show where lay so many hopes buried.
45:29 Speaker 01 They spend more than a week trying to pull up the cable, and they get close.
45:34 Speaker 13 They get almost to the surface.
45:36 Speaker 01 But the rope they're using to reel it up breaks.
45:43 Speaker 13 They have nothing else they can do at this point. In the middle of the deepest part of the ocean, they have no other way of recovering it. So they mark the position on their chart and they put a buoy there in case it's there when they come back.
45:57 Speaker 01 Because of course, they were coming back. By now, you know that Cyrus Field wasn't the kind of guy who gave up.
46:05 Speaker 19 We have learned a great deal, and next summer, we shall lay the cable without doubt.
46:11 Speaker 14 Apparently, when he traveled internationally, the first word he'd learned was faster in every foreign language, and that was kind of his mantra.
46:24 Speaker 01 So in 1866, the next year, in July, Cyrus and his crew set out again.
46:35 Speaker 13 No problems, nothing happens on the way.
46:39 Speaker 13 They arrive in Newfoundland, they land the cable in Trinity Bay at Hart's content, and they send a message back.
46:51 Speaker 01 And on July 27, 1866, the Great Eastern had successfully reached Newfoundland with the cable intact.
47:08 Speaker 01 And for Cyrus Field.
47:10 Speaker 13 They said when they landed the cable, he wept.
47:13 Speaker 19 I went to my cabin. I locked the door. I could no longer restrain my tears.
47:29 Speaker 01 The Queen of England and President Andrew Johnson congratulated each other in dispatches published in newspapers, along with a note from Johnson to Cyrus, saying, "May the cable under the sea tend to promote harmony between the Republic of the West and the governments of the Eastern Hemisphere." Under the cable agreement, the British and American governments had dibs on using them. And with this new transatlantic cable being 80 times faster than the first one, messages and money soon started flying.
48:03 Speaker 13 So for $100 in gold, in 1866, you could send a 20-word message across the cable. Bring that into modern money, it's hundreds and hundreds of dollars for a single message.
48:14 Speaker 14 Which is phenomenally expensive, but it beats, you know, boating across the ocean.
48:27 Speaker 01 As for Cyrus Field, the project he spent over a decade on, invested his own fortune in, that he believed in with his whole being, was finally finished. He could finally give his mind and body some rest.
48:42 Speaker 14 Apparently, he crossed the Atlantic over 50 times, dealing with this. And he got seasick every time. And apparently, he didn't sleep much.
48:53 Speaker 01 He considered laying a cable across the Pacific Ocean, but never ended up doing it. Eventually, he got into New York rail cars, but made some bad investments.
49:04 Speaker 13 Unfortunately, he got suckered in by the robber barons in New York, and they played him.
49:10 Speaker 14 He was embarrassed. His reputation had been, had really taken a hit at that time.
49:17 Speaker 01 And it wasn't just that he lost money.
49:19 Speaker 14 Just a string of misfortune. His wife died, a child died.
49:24 Speaker 09 It's sort of the sad tale of what happens to Cyrus.
49:41 Speaker 01 Cyrus Field died in 1892 at the age of 72. And he did live to see a cable boom. By 1900, cables connected almost every continent.
49:55 Speaker 13 If you look at a present day cable map of the world, and you look at the 1902 cable map of the world, you will see those cables are on exactly the same routes, okay, worldwide, with the exception of the Pacific, which is much more heavily cabled now.
50:10 Speaker 01 In the 1950s, the first telephone cables were laid in the ocean. And fiber optic cables followed, starting in the 1980s. Today, hundreds of undersea cables keep billions of people connected.
50:26 Speaker 09 The way this technology moved forward was through the persistence of, you know, a group of men who really, really, really wanted this big project to happen.
50:39 Speaker 09 Sometimes you just really need to have really big outrageous crazy thinkers and be like, yes, let's do that.
50:48 Speaker 01 Cyrus Field wasn't an engineer. He wasn't a sailor. But he was someone who had a vision. One of those people who feel that it's their duty to change the way we live, whether the rest of us believe in their vision or not. It's something his great-great-grandson thinks about a lot.
51:09 Speaker 14 There are certain personalities out there, and you can see them in the world today, and they, they can't help themselves.
51:17 Speaker 14 I just picture his family. He was just not there. He was not present.
51:24 Speaker 14 I realize I'm not that kind of guy. I mean, I want to make the world a better place, and I volunteer at the food bank, and I'm on the parks board and, and stuff like that. But I, I'm not willing to sacrifice it all personally for the greater good.
51:58 Rund Abdelfatah? And that's it for this week's show. I'm Rahn Abdelfatah.
52:01 Speaker 01 I'm Ramtin Arablouei, and you've been listening to Throughline from NPR.
52:06 Rund Abdelfatah? This episode was produced by me.
52:08 Speaker 01 And me, and.
52:10 Speaker 07 Lawrence Wu.
52:11 Rund Abdelfatah? Julie Kane. Anya Steinberg. Casey Minor. Kristina Kimm.
52:15 Speaker 21 Devin Kadyama.
52:16 Rund Abdelfatah? Irene Noguchi.
52:18 Speaker 01 Fact checking for this episode was done by Kevin Vogel. The episode was mixed by Gilli Moon.
52:25 Speaker 01 Thanks to Jason Divingracia, Louis Fisher, Christian Benford, Esteban Lopez, and Andy Su for their voiceover work. Thanks also to Doug Madury, Julian Rawl, Alan Malden, Jane Munga, Diana Gravely, and Al Jazeera. Thank you also to Johannes Dergi, Laura Schwartz, Tommy Evans, and Beth Donovan.
52:52 Rund Abdelfatah? Music for this episode was composed by Ramtin and his band Drop Electric, which includes.
52:57 Speaker 07 Naveed Marvi. Sho Fujiwara.
52:59 Rund Abdelfatah? Anya Mizani.
53:02 Speaker 01 And Throughline listeners, we love hearing from you. You've already shared a lot of your own love and respect for NPR's Gaza reporter Anas Baba, who was recently featured in our episode From the Front Lines. The episode looks at how war reporters work, and Anas talked to Rahn from Gaza City about his work there. And here are some examples. Casey Went wrote, "Thank you for this episode. I think about Anas a lot and worry about him, so it was nice to hear his reporting." And Erin McNeil wrote, "Anas Baba, thank you, thank you, thank you."
53:40 Speaker 01 So please take a minute and leave us a review and a rating on Spotify or Apple. It actually really does help more people find out about the show and it lets us know how we're doing. And if you do it, you might just hear your review right here on the show.
53:58 Rund Abdelfatah? Thanks for listening.
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