Page 4 Advertisements Column 1

Globe, Volume II, Issue 180, 6 January 1875, Page 4

“ Can it be done?” asks the Philadelphia Ledger —that is, can measures be devised to enable steamships at sea to keep up telegraphic communication with the shore ? The rest of the civilised and commercial world is within easy telegraphic communication of each port, but the large community which lives on our passenger steamships is totally cut off from the rest of the world the moment land disappears, and the question is—“ Can anything be done for them?” Two plans are suggested—one to pay out a small and comparatively inexpensive cable by the departing steamer, thus keeping up communication with the sailing port; but this plan meets with so many objections in the shape of expenses, the loss of a cable on each trip, and the uncertainty to keep up such communication, that another is suggested, having more of system and business principles as its basis—namely, the establishment of cable stations on the high seas, built upon buoys, at which a steamer may stop and communicate if in distress, give her time, and enable her passengers to communicate with the shore. The object would without question be extremely desirable, while the plan, to say the least, appears no more impracticable than did the laying of the cable between the United States and Europe before the hitherto incredible task had been accomplished.