2-982-271 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Laying the Atlantic Telegraph Cable - Displacement of the Cable on Board the "Agamemnon", 1858. Storm of 20th June. 'The ship was almost as wet inside as out...everything getting adrift and being smashed, and every one on board jamming themselves up in corners or holding on to beams to prevent their going adrift likewise...the Agamemnon was rolling and labouring fearfully, with the sky getting darker, and both wind and sea increasing every minute...three or four gigantic waves were seen approaching the ship, coming heavily and slowly on through the mist, nearer and nearer, rolling on like hills of green water, with a crown of foam that seemed to double their height...The upper-dock coil had strained the ship to the very utmost, but still held on fast; but not so the coil in the main hold, which had begun to get adrift, and the top kept working and shifting over from side to side as the ship lurched, till some forty or fifty miles were in a hopeless state of tangle, resembling nothing so much as a cargo of live eels, and there was every prospect of the tangle spreading deeper and deeper as the bad weather continued'. From "Illustrated London News", 1858.