Sep 17, 2015 - Sale 2391

Sale 2391 - Lot 312

Price Realized: $ 11,700
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 700 - $ 1,000
'THE GRAND FAILURE WE HAVE MADE IN LAYING THE TELEGRAPH" (SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING.) Fithian, Edwin. Letters written from the fleet which made the first failed effort at a trans-Atlantic telegraph cable. 6 Autograph Letters Signed to his parents, plus two unsigned partial letters, each 4 to 8 pages in length; condition generally strong. (MRS) Vp, June 1857 to March 1858
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Additional Details

Edwin Fithian (1820-1908) of New Jersey served as the First Assistant Engineer aboard the USS Susquehanna, one of two American vessels which worked with two English naval vessels to attempt the first trans-Atlantic cable in 1857. The first letter was written off London on 13 June 1857: 'I have also visited the establishment of Glass, Elliott & Co., who are manufacturing the telegraphic cable. It is a great curiosity. . . . There are seven small wires of copper the size of a small knitting needle twisted together, and this is covered with gutta perche, forming a cord a little more than a quarter of an inch.' Almost a full page is devoted to the engineering details of the plan. The next letter was written on 30 July, just a week before the cable-laying was to begin: 'The Niagara is here with her part of the cable on board. . . . By the time you get this, we shall be on our way. The plan is now that we commence from this side to lay down the cable.' The cable soon broke, scuttling the project for the project for the season; Fithian's third letter on 5 September describes 'the grand failure we have made in laying the telegraph': 'On the morning of the fourth day out, we had gone 300 miles and reached a place in the ocean two miles in depth, the confounded thing parted. The signal was made from the Niagara and we all stopped and there we stood just like a flock of bewildered geese. . . . I believe the truth is that by some malconstruction or mismanagement of the machinery it stopped while the ship was underweigh and not being strong enough to hold the ship, it had nothing else to do but to break.' The next two letters (both incomplete) make only passing reference to the cable. The 15 February 1858 letter discusses at length the Susquehanna's time off Nicaragua in the wake of William Walker's adventures there; he judges Walker's men as 'little better than pirates.' Provenance: Charles Hamilton sale, 30 September 1965, lot 5, to the consignor.