Introduction
My favourite thing in the museum is a small piece of the 1858 Transatlantic Cable, guaranteed by Tiffany and Co., so I decided to take this chance to write about the quest to connect Europe and North America with a copper cable along the ocean floor. The nineteenth century saw a massive boom in communications technology, with much of it being centered around telegraphy. This technology, first developed and demonstrated by Samuel Morse in 1844, made it so that messages that could take days or weeks to travel by mail could arrive in minutes. The laying of the cable was not without trials and tribulations, and the story behind it is fascinating. It even has a connection to NL, because the North American end was laid in Heart's Content, and the cable's impact can still be felt today in 2025. So let's get into talking about these factors!
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| Piece of 1858 Transatlantic Cable in Admiralty House Communications Museum |
The Journey to Creation
The driving force behind the laying of the Transatlantic Cable was Cyrus Field, a business man who had made his fortune running a paper company. As he was not an electrician or scientist of any kind, he enlisted the help of several men, including Samuel Morse himself. They began the journey in 1854 when Frederic Newton Gisborne, a British born engineer living in Newfoundland, pitched Field the idea of connecting the island to the existing telegraph network, which would shorten the time it took messages to be delivered between the two continents by a single day. Inspired by this, Field saw the potential to shorten it by weeks if a cable was also run across the Atlantic Ocean.
From when his idea first formed, it took twelve years for the first permanently successful cable to be finished in 1866, as there were many hiccups along the way. First, there was the problem of where to lay it, for which Field reached out to Lieutenant Matthew Fontaine Maury, who had taken soundings of the Atlantic's floor and believed there to be an almost entirely flat plane between Ireland and Newfoundland, which he dubbed "Telegraph Plateau." It was only years after they started the project that they realized this path was not, in fact, flat. There was also the issue of protecting an electrified copper wire under thousands of metres of water. The solution to this was found in a Malaysian plant called gutta percha, which formed a natural plastic when put in hot water. Over that, the wire was covered with iron and hemp.
Next came the attempts to actually lay the cable, which started in 1857. The first saw the USS Niagara and the HMS Agamemnon, an American and British ship respectively, meet in Ireland to split the load of the incredibly heavy wire between them, as no contemporary ship was capable of carrying it alone. They intended for one ship to drop all of its wire, then to splice the end together with the wire length aboard the second ship, but after several hundred miles, the cable snapped and was lost to the waves. After making improvements, the second attempt was made in 1858, this time with the two ships meeting in the middle, splicing their cable ends together, then each sailing to their respective harbours in Newfoundland and Ireland. After fixing an initial signal loss at the 80 mile mark, in 200 miles the signal was lost again, and this time it was unrecoverable. With enough summer months left and a quick turnaround time in preparations, the third attempt was also made in 1858, and used the same meet in the middle strategy. After overcoming several more difficulties, each ship reached their ports with a working signal, and the transatlantic cable was finally successfully laid. At least for a period of four weeks, after which the incredibly slow connection (it took 16 hours for the first 98 word message to transmit), this signal too disappeared forever, and Field had to return to the drawing board.
The mission was paused over the course of the American Civil War, but Field quickly returned with another attempt in 1865, utilizing the Great Eastern, which was the largest ship in existence at the time. After fixing multiple issues with iron nails killing the signal after being picked up, the wire eventually broke and was unrecoverable as it sank to the bottom of the ocean. Undeterred, Field tried again with the Great Eastern in 1866, which now triumphantly sailed into Heart's Content. The Cable was finally laid across the entirety of the Atlantic, and Europe and North America were connected through telegraphy. Not quite satisfied, Field also returned to the site of the 1865 cable loss, recovered the lost cable, spliced it to a new length and returned once again to Heart's Content, ending his endeavors with two working transatlantic cables completed.
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| Great Eastern 1866 - Wikimedia Commons |
Why Heart's Content?
Not only is Newfoundland the closest landmass to Europe in North America, the harbour at Heart's Content is one of the deepest on the east coast of Newfoundland, and it also has a low shoreline, so it was ideal to accommodate the bulk of the Great Eastern and for landing a submarine telegraph cable. There was also a clear sightline from the shore that looked out at the cable arriving from Valencia. Heart's Content had the benefit of natural protection from the elements as well, as it is in a subterranean state. The shoreline has remained virtually unchanged since the cables were first laid in 1866, and six telegraph cables can still be seen emerging from the water onto the beach. The Cable station built there in 1876 is still standing as well, and is in excellent condition. It operates as a museum from May to October each year, as the Heart's Content Cable Station Provincial Historic Site, and I can highly recommend it to anyone interested in the transatlantic cable, or wider communications history.
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| Landing of the Atlantic Cable of 1866, Heart's Content, Newfoundland - Wikimedia Commons |
Lasting Impact
The Transatlantic Cable that was first laid in 1866 was still in use and functioning up to the 1960s. It laid the groundwork for future innovations in communications technology, as copper telephone wires were again laid across the Atlantic in the 1950s, which were remarkably similar to those of Field's technology. They were replaced by fiber-optic cables in the 1980s, different in design but also laid along the ocean floor. The Transatlantic Cable also contributed to linguistic changes, because of the sheer cost of sending messages. In 1866, it cost about 100 dollars to send a ten word message, and this steep price led a more shortened and neutral language to develop, which became especially common for journalists. Ainissa Ramirez of the American Scientist believes this linguistic adaptation can still be seen today in websites which have character limits, like X (formerly known as Twitter) and Discord.
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Transatlantic submarine cable map - umn.edu |
Conclusion
Despite all of the trials Field and his team faced, there is no doubt that the Transatlantic Cable had massive, transformative effects on the world once it was laid. It was one of the first steps toward the hyper interconnected world we live in today, and Newfoundland played a vital role in its journey. I have been fascinated by the Transatlantic Cable since I was a teenager and my dad took me to watch the recreation of the first transatlantic message sent along the cable between the Heart's Content Cable Station and its sister museum, the Valentia Transatlantic Cable Station in Ireland. It was such a cool experience to feel like part of history, that I immediately wanted to learn more about it. I hope you have enjoyed this tale as much as I do!
Bibliography
All information in this post is drawn from my own previous research/experiences, and the two sources cited below.
Ramirez, Ainissa. "A Wire Across the Ocean." American Scientist 103, no. 3 (2015): 180. Accessed on September 22, 2025. https://www.americanscientist.org/article/a-wire-across-the-ocean.
"Transatlantic Cable Ensemble (Canada)." UNESCO World Heritage Convention. UNESCO, December 20, 2022. https://whc.unesco.org/en/tentativelists/6631/.
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