3-056-705 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

HMS Agamemnon laying the original Atlantic cable, 1850s. Sailors watch a whale. The Agamemnon was a Royal Navy 91-gun battleship ordered by the Admiralty in 1849, in response to the perceived threat from France by their possession of ships of the Napoléon class. In 1857, the British government fitted her out to carry 1,250 tons of telegraphic cable for the Atlantic Telegraph Company's first attempt to lay a transatlantic telegraph cable. Although this initial cable attempt was unsuccessful, the project was resumed the following year and Agamemnon and her U.S. counterpart, USS Niagara, successfully joined the ends of their two sections of cable in the middle of the Atlantic on 29 July 1858.