Fleeming Jenkin: Encyclopedia II - Fleeming Jenkin - Cable-laying on the Elba

Fleeming Jenkin - Cable-laying on the Elba

Fleeming Jenkin - First voyage

In the spring of 1855, he was fitting out the S.S. Elba at Birkenhead for his first telegraph cruise. It appears that earlier in 1855, Henry Brett attempted to lay a cable across the Mediterranean between Cape Spartivento, in the south of Sardinia, and a point near Bona, on the coast of Algeria. It was a gutta-percha cable of six wires or conductors, manufactured by Glass, Elliott & Co., a firm which afterwards combined with the Gutta-Percha Company and became the Telegraph Construction and Maintenance Company. Brett laid the cable from the Result, a sailing ship in tow, instead of a more manageable steamer. Meeting with 600 fathoms (1100 m) of water when twenty-five miles (45 km) from land, the cable ran out so fast that a tangled skein came up out of the hold and the line had to be severed. Having only 150 miles (280 km) on board to span the whole distance of 140 miles (260 km), he grappled the lost cable near the shore, raised it, and under-ran or passed it over the ship, for some twenty miles (35 km), then cut it, leaving the seaward end on the bottom. He then spliced the ship's cable to the shoreward end and resumed paying-out but after seventy miles (130 km) in all were laid, another rapid rush of cable took place, and Brett was obliged to cut and abandon the line.

Another attempt was made the following year, but with no better success. Brett then tried to lay a three-wire cable from the steamer Dutchman but owing to the deep water (in some places 1500 fathoms or 2700 m) when he came to a few miles from Galita, his destination on the Algerian coast, he had not enough cable to reach the land. He telegraphed to London for more cable to be made and sent out, while the ship remained there holding the end. After five days the cable parted, perhaps as a result of rubbing on the bottom.

It was to recover the lost cable of these expeditions that the Elba was got ready for sea. Jenkin had fitted her out the year before for laying the Cagliari to Malta and Corfu cables but on this occasion she was better equipped. She had a new machine for picking up the cable, and a sheave or pulley at the bows for it to run over, both designed by Jenkin, together with a variety of wooden buoys, ropes, and chains. Liddell, assisted by F. C. Webb and Fleeming Jenkin, was in charge of the expedition. Jenkin had nothing to do with the electrical work, his care being the deck machinery for raising the cable but it was a responsible job. He reported the expedition in letters to Miss Austin and in diary entries [2]

During the latter part of the work much of the cable was found to be looped and twisted into 'kinks' from having been so slackly laid and two immense tangled skeins were raised on board, one by means of the mast-head and fore-yard tackle. Photographs of this ravelled cable were exhibited as a curiosity in the windows of Newall & Co.'s shop in The Strand. By July 5 the whole of the six-wire cable had been recovered and a portion of the three-wire cable, the rest being abandoned as unfit for use, owing to its twisted condition. On the evening of the 2nd the first mate, while on the water unshackling a buoy, was struck in the back by a fluke of the ship's anchor as she drifted, and so severely injured that he lay for many weeks at Cagliari. Jenkin's knowledge of languages made him useful as an interpreter but, in mentioning this incident to Miss Austin, he writes, For no fortune would I be a doctor to witness these scenes continually. Pain is a terrible thing.

Fleeming Jenkin - Future partners

Early in 1859 he met Sir William Thomson (later Lord Kelvin), his future friend and partner. Lewis Gordon, of Newall & Co., subsequently the first professor of engineering in a British University, was in Glasgow seeing Sir William's instruments for testing and signalling on the first Atlantic cable during the six weeks of its working. Gordon said he should like to show them to a young man of remarkable ability, engaged at their Birkenhead works. Jenkin was telegraphed for, arrived next morning, and spent a week in Glasgow, mostly in Sir William's class-room and laboratory at the old college. Sir William was struck with Jenkin's brightness, ability, thoroughness and determination to learn. I soon found,' he remarks, 'that thoroughness of honesty was as strongly engrained in the scientific as in the moral side of his character. Their talk was chiefly on the electric telegraph but Jenkin was eager, too, on the subject of physics. After staying a week he returned to the factory but he began experiments and corresponded briskly with Sir William about cable work. Sir William seems to have infected his visitor during their brief contact with the magnetic force of his personality and enthusiasm.

On February 26, during a four days' leave, Jenkin married Miss Austin at Northiam, returning to his work the following Tuesday. He was strongly attached to his wife and his letters reveal a warmth of affection which a casual observer would never have suspected in him. In 1869 he wrote, People may write novels, and other people may write poems, but not a man or woman among them can say how happy a man can be who is desperately in love with his wife after ten years of marriage. Five weeks before his death he wrote to her, Your first letter from Bournemouth gives me heavenly pleasure - for which I thank Heaven and you, too, who are my heaven on earth.

Fleeming Jenkin - Second voyage

During the summer he took another telegraph cruise in the Mediterranean. This time the Elba was to lay a cable from the Greek islands of Syros and Crete to Egypt. He again reported in letters to his wife [3]

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Cable-laying on the Elba", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki