o connect England and Ireland
by means of a cable between Holyhead and Howth; but communication
between the two countries was finally effected in 1853, when a cable
was successfully laid between Portpatrick and Donaghadee (31).

As showing one of the dangers to which cables laid in comparatively
shallow waters are exposed, we may relate the curious accident that
befell the Portpatrick cable in 1873. During a severe storm in that
year the Port Glasgow ship Marseilles capsized in the vicinity of
Portpatrick, the anchor fell out and caught on to the telegraph cable,
which, however, gave way. The ship was afterward captured and towed
into Rothesay Bay, in an inverted position, by a Greenock tug, when
part of the cable was found entangled about the anchor.

The smallest private companies are the Indo-European Telegraph
Company, with two cables in the Crimea, of a total length of fourteen
and a half miles; and the River Plate Telegraph Company, with one
cable from Montevideo to Buenos Ayres, thirty-two miles long.

The smallest government telegraph organization is that of New
Caledonia, with its one solitary cable one mile long.

We will now proceed to give a few particulars regarding the companies
having cables from Europe to America.

The most important company is the Anglo-American Telegraph Company,
whose history is inseparably connected with that of the trials and
struggles of the pioneers of cable laying.

Its history begins in 1851 when Tebets, an American, and Gisborne, an
English engineer, formed the Electric Telegraph Company of
Newfoundland, and laid down twelve miles of cable between Cape Breton
and Nova Scotia. This company was shortly afterward dissolved, and its
property transferred to the Telegraphic Company of New York,
Newfoundland and London, founded by Cyrus W. Field, and who in 1854
obtained an extension of the monopoly from the government to lay
cables.

A cable, eighty-five miles long, was laid between Cape Breton and
Newfoundland (22).

Field then came to England and floated an English company, which
amalgamated with the American one under the title of the Atlantic
Telegraph Company.

The story of the laying of the Atlantic cables of 1857 and 1865, their
success and failures, has often been told, so we need not go into any
details. It may be noted, however, that communication was first
established between Valentia and Newfoundland on August 5. 1858, but
the cable ceased to transmit signals