English and Foreign.

Lyttelton Times, Volume IX, Issue 586, 16 June 1858, Page 4

English and Foreign.

The "Times " announces that the general programme of the second, and, it is to be hoped, final attempt to submerge the Atlantic telegraph wire, has already been decided on. Ihe 400 miles of cable ordered to replace the 384 which were lost last autumn off Valentia have been completed, and it is intended, in order to make better provision for casualties, that an additional 300 miles shall at once be preceeded with. The Agamemnon and the Niagara are the vessels again to be employed in the attempt to lay the wire, and the operation will, this year, be commenced in the middle of June, in which month, it is said, there are some five or six consecutive days during which a gale in the Atlantic was seldom or ever known to occur. The line will be joined and laid from the centre of the ocean, the Niagara bringing her end of the cable to Ireland, and the Agamemnon conveying hers to America. The Agamemnon was to leave New York on the Ist March and she was daily expected at Plymouth, where she will take on board, at the Keyham Dockyard, 1500 miles of the wire. On this occasion the cable will not be piled away in one huge mass, but will be distributed equally in the fore, midship, and after-part of the vessel,, in three coils of 500 miles each. As soon as the wire has been stowed away, the two steamers will proceed into deep water, when a number of experiments will be made with the paying-out machinery, to ascertain, practically, if any difficulties exist in the proposed plan for submerging the wire from the centre of the Atlantic.