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Transatlantic Cable 11 – Hooking the Cable

We’re fishing with hooks
For a monster eel –
He’s somewhere around here, we know.
We’ll scrape in each nook
And each crevice with steel,
To catch us a live one below.

We’re plumbing the depth
With our makeshift prong
To land him right out of the wet.
He’s only a thumbs-width,
But boy, is he long.
We’ll fetch him up here with us yet.

He isn’t so slippy
When grabbed by his tail –
We know where he’s likely to lay.
His head may be whippy,
His body may flail,
But he won’t be wriggling away.

So surface our booty,
Our highly-prized freight,
He’s more precious than gold by the ton –
So haul up our beauty,
And haul up his mate,
And splice them together as one.

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Transatlantic Cable 10 – Laying the Line

Niagara and Agamemnon –
Those were the ships that sailed
Paying out the precious flex
From wheeling drums upon their decks –
Meeting in the middle as they trailed.
The cable failed.

The tide comes in, the tide goes out,
We have no doubt it will be so –
We’ll wait until it turns about
For soon the current has to flow.

“Make new lines and load them on
The Great Eastern !”, they yelled –
“We need the best and largest beast
To string the West and thread the East
Until the seas and shareholders are quelled.”
The cable held.

The tide goes out, the tide comes in,
We know the when, we know the why –
We cannot hope to stop them,
But let’s ride them when they’re high.

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Transatlantic Cable 8 – Crafting the Cable

Five thousand miles of cable are ordered from two different firms,
Made and delivered in only six months, are the explicit terms.
As thick as a forefinger, Kerry to Newfoundland, under the tide –
Valentia Island to Heart’s Content Harbour, it spans the divide.

It has to be easily coiled, yet rigid and strong by design,
And weigh-in at one ton per mile, for five thousand miles of line.
For make it too heavy, and then it gets far too unwieldy to lay,
But make it too light, and the currents will catch it and tug it away.

The core of the cable is untainted copper in two-mile lengths –
This strand has been plaited from seven pure wires which give it its strength.
Then coated three times with refined gutta-percha, then dowsed and immersed
In longer and shorter arrangements, to test it and weed out the worst.

And next are the layers of hemp under pitch under tar, tightly bound,
Then this is all drawn through a rig where the outer sheath wires are wound –
Eighteen quick bobbins with bright charcoal iron strands weave day and night,
To wrap thirty miles of cable per day per machine at their height.

The copper and iron in wires in strands in the cable, if strewn
In a single long filament, easily stretches from here to the Moon.
Then finally, more pitch and tar, and it’s done and it’s set for the deep,
So load it onboard and we’ll soon have it working and earning its keep.

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Transatlantic Cable 7 – The Businessmen

For all your sparks and all your dreams,
And tinkering in sheds,
Without our means, your greatest schemes
Would never leave your heads.

Who paid for Archimedes’ tools ?
Who built each church and pyramid ?
Who funded Oxford’s ancient schools ?
I’ll tell you who – we did !

The business of business is building your dream,
By priming the pump and by working the seam –
Alone, we’re but tepid – together, we’re steam !
So stoke up the pressure
And speed up the thresher
To reap our returns in the Future’s regime.

To fund savants and engineers,
Don’t trust in dons or lords –
It’s we who lift your valves and gears
From off your drawing boards.

Who built up Caxton, Bacon, Hooke ?
The musket and the blunderbuss ?
Who floated Cabot, Drake and Cook ?
I’ll tell you who – it’s us !

And if we should falter or labour in vain,
We’ll swallow our losses and start out again –
We’ve plenty of patience to wait out the rain.
So get the cogs turning
And set the coals burning
To forge the brave Future and ride the big train.

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Transatlantic Cable 6 – The Engineer

Bigger, faster, higher, stronger,
Pressures greater, pistons longer,
Pumping, thrusting, pulsing, striving,
Flywheels spinning, crankshafts driving.
I built for you a braver world,
A place of pulleys, springs and gears
Where fates enmeshed and fortunes swirled
Within the palms of engineers.
You had the road, you had the wheel,
But what you lacked-for was the dream –
You brought me rust, I gave you steel –
You brought me rain, I gave you steam.
For all I did,
There’s so much greater, greater that I could’ve done.
For all I strode,
There’s so much further, further that I could’ve run.
For all I built,
There’s so much higher, higher that I could’ve got.
For all I planned,
I was ready, always ready, but the world was not.

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Transatlantic Cable 5 – The Senator’s Speech

Does it seem, I say,
All but the most incredible
A slender copper wire is stretched
Across two thousand miles ?
Across the all-but-fathomless,
Where humans cannot penetrate,
There spans a thread across the sea
To link our distant isles.

Does it seem, I say,
All but a miracle of art
That thoughts of living men
In the cheerful light of day,
About the markets and the seasons,
And elections, and the wars,
And tender nothings from our lives,
Should manifest this way ?

Does it seem, I say,
All but the most remarkable
These thoughts should clothe themselves
In such an elemental spark,
And shoot with fiery speed
In a moment, in a twinkling,
From hemisphere to hemisphere,
Through vast abyssal dark ?

Does it seem, I say,
All but the work of genius
That through such nether oceans
Streams of thoughts should race and leap ?
Among the uncouth monsters,
Along the wreck-paved floor,
And throughout the oozy dungeons
Of the silent, rayless deep.

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Transatlantic Cable 4 – The Visionary

The venture-prizer – that was the man
Who knew not a jot about the telegraph –
But don’t yet laugh, he had a plan.

In 1851, he knew a cable could be run
Beneath the Channel, shore-to-shore –
Because it had been done the year before.

More than likely, if not him,
Then someone else would chance their limb,
But it was he who seized the circumstance.

By 1865, his crazy dream had come alive,
With Yankee pluck (and maybe madness too) –
His luck ran good and bad, but he ran true.

Some say that history is just a few great men –
But then, what of the sailors and the bankers and the bureaucrats,
The cable-makers and the engineers and the diplomats ?

But nevertheless, perhaps it also takes the skill
Of a charismatic hope and an unshakable will –
This world is changed and made anew by those who do.

Someone needs to shout above the scrum,
To point out to the hum-a-drum
That this idea’s time has come.

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Transatlantic Cable 3 – Slow News Days

Once, the gossip only moved
As fast as anyone could walk,
Or gallop, if there were a need
To hurry-up the speed of talk.
The fastest was the pigeon post,
As long as messages were short.
But once the ocean vast was reached,
Then all those means would count for naught.

Despite the wings, despite the hooves,
Despite the engineers,
We’ve not advanced the speed of news
These past two thousand years.

So letters, treaties, plans and briefs
Must make their way together
As slowly, slowly, boat by boat,
They risk the waves and weather.
The urgent and the leisurely
Arrive still side by side,
Yet over land we’d have them there
As fast as we can ride.

Despite the ships, despite the crews,
Despite the steam and gears,
We’ve not advanced the speed of news
These past two thousand years.

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Transatlantic Cable 2 – Emigrants’ Song

Dear Dad,
There’s just so much I have to tell you,
Just so much that I have seen…
…Dear Sis,
I hope you’re keeping well,
I’m keeping fit and fed and clean…
…My darling Anne,
Oh how I miss you still,
I hope your married life is good…
…My best mate Dan,
And all the lads a’t’mill,
Is there someone else where I once stood ?…
…Dear Mum…
…Mijn lieve Klara…
…Bonne-maman…
….A Seán, a chara…
…Take these words, they’re all we’ve got,
They’ll cross the sea as we cannot…
…Cari saluti…
…Bester grus…
…Todo mi amor…
…Mit einem Kuss…

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