3-053-479 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Seine laying the land end of the Brazilian Submarine Cable at Madeira, 1873. 'Our readers...will be interested in knowing that the Brazilian submarine cable as far as Madeira is laid, and will ere long be in working order. The Telegraph Construction and Maintenance Company's steamer Seine, employed in this work, successfully laid about 380 miles of the cable, when, in picking up a part consequent on the detection of a flaw, it parted, sinking to the bottom, 2250 fathoms below. After nearly a month's delay the cable was recovered, and the laying finally completed. The cable was lost in one of the huge submarine valleys lately discovered by the Challenger; and the Seine has performed a feat unequalled in the history of cable-laying, for no vessel has before succeeded in picking up a cable single-handed from depths at all approaching the 2250 fathoms from which this one was raised. The Great Eastern, working in rather shallower water, has had two vessels assisting her. The island of Madeira will now be the medium through which news from Ashantee will reach us. Our Illustration is from a photograph sent us by Mr. R. Blandy, and taken, at the moment of landing the shore end of the cable, by Mr. J. F. Comacho [Camacho?], of Madeira'. From "Illustrated London News", 1873.