In the Bows of the Great Eastern: The Cable Broken and Lost, Preparing to Grapple, August 2nd, 1865

In the Bows of the Great Eastern: The Cable Broken and Lost, Preparing to Grapple, August 2nd, 1865

Robert Charles Dudley

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

One of the 19th century's great technological achievements was to lay a telegraphic cable beneath the Atlantic, allowing messages to speed back and forth between North America and Europe in minutes, rather than ten or twelve days by steamer. An initially successful attempt in 1858, led by Cyrus W. Field and financed by the Atlantic Telegraph Company, failed after three weeks. Two working cables were finally laid in July and September 1866, the result of repeated efforts by the indefatigable Field, a cadre of engineers, technicians, and sailors, two groups of financial backers, and significant help from the British and United States navies. Dudley documented the process in a series of watercolors and oils, here showing the Great Eastern, a huge passenger steamer by Isambard Kingdom Brunel then recommissioned to serve the cable effort, lowering a grappling hook into the water after a cable broke and was lost at sea on August 2, 1865. Initial retrievalattempts proved fruitless, but the following summer the cable was located, brought up from the seabed, spliced, and laid on to Newfoundland. In 1892 Field donated art works by Dudley, commemorative medals, memorabilia, and specimens of cable to the Museum.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

In the Bows of the Great Eastern: The Cable Broken and Lost, Preparing to Grapple, August 2nd, 1865In the Bows of the Great Eastern: The Cable Broken and Lost, Preparing to Grapple, August 2nd, 1865In the Bows of the Great Eastern: The Cable Broken and Lost, Preparing to Grapple, August 2nd, 1865In the Bows of the Great Eastern: The Cable Broken and Lost, Preparing to Grapple, August 2nd, 1865In the Bows of the Great Eastern: The Cable Broken and Lost, Preparing to Grapple, August 2nd, 1865

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.