3-028-645 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Telegraph Bay, Aden, with the Great Eastern, 1870. 'We have received from Dr. E. W. James, civil surgeon to the British station at Aden, several photographs [relating to] the successful completion of the line of submarine telegraph from Bombay to Suez. The Great Eastern, attended by the Chiltern, both under command of Captain Halpin, lay at Bombay, to take in coal, from Jan. 28 to Feb. 14; but the Bombay shore-end of the cable, ten miles in length, was laid by the Chiltern on the 7th. The Great Eastern laid the main line to Aden, paying out 1750 miles of cable in a distance of 1600 miles, at depths ranging from 900 fathoms to 2200 fathoms...On the 26th,...the Great Eastern arrived near Aden, joining the Chiltern...A length of intermediate cable, about twenty miles, was spliced to the main line...it was found on the 28th that the cable laid had parted from both its buoys. But the Chiltern picked it up...and made it once more secure. Next day the electric tests were applied, and the whole line to Bombay was proved to be in perfect condition...Messages of congratulation were sent through to Lord Mayo and Sir Seymour Fitzgerald, and the laying of the Red Sea section to Suez commenced the same afternoon'. From "Illustrated London News, 1870.