JULES VERNE, 1870, UNE VILLE FLOTTANTE SUBMARINE CABLES AND THE EAST EASTERN CHAPTER II

“After some twenty voyages between England and America, one of which was marked by very serious accidents, the exploitation of the Great-Eastern was momentarily abandoned. That immense ship, prepared for the transport of passengers, seemed to be of no use: the distrustful caste of overseas passengers despised it. After the failure of the first attempts to establish the cable on its telegraphic plateau (bad success, due in large part to the inadequacy of the ships that carried it), the engineers remembered the Great-Eastern. Only he could store on board those 3,400 kilometers of wire, weighing 4,500 tons. Only he could, thanks to his indifference to the pounding of the sea, develop and submerge that immense hawser. But the stowage of the cable on the ship required special care. Two boilers out of six and one chimney out of three, and belonging to the propeller engine, were removed, and in their place vast receptacles were arranged, to house the cable while preserving it a layer of water from the atmospheric layers. In this way, the thread passed from those floating lakes to the sea, without suffering contact with the atmosphere”.