SUBMARINE ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH BETWEEN DOVER AND CALAIS.

New Zealander, Volume 7, Issue 508, 26 February 1851, Page 3

SUBMARINE ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH BETWEEN DOVER AND CALAIS.

One of the most interesting applications of science in our days was conducted through successful experiment on Wednesday. The submarine electric telegraph now traverses the twenty-otic miles of deep sea between the English and Fiench coasts ; and, so far as this marine hiatus is concerned, message! can at this moment be interchanged between Paris and London with nearly the same rapidity that you can talk to a deaf friend at your elbow by visible alphabet of the hands. The point* chosen by the Telegraph Company for their operations were Shakspere's Cliff at Dover and the opposite chalk headland of Cape Grisnez on tne French coast midway between Calais and Boulogne. The operations were conducted from the Go iah oteam boat. Between the paddle-wheels, in the ceutre of the vessel, wa< a gigantic drum or wheel, nearly fifteen feet long and seven feet in diameter, weighing seven tons, and fixed on a tlrong framework. Upon it was coiled up in close convolutions about thirty miles of telegraphic wire, encased in a covering of gutia percha. The intention was to steam out at five miles an hour, to pay out progressively the whole extent of telegraphic tackle, and to imbed the wire by means of leaden weights in the soil at the bottom of the sea. The vessel was provisioned for the day, and Captain Bullock, of her Majesty's steam -ship Widgeon, caused the track of the navigation to be marked in as direct a rout as possible by placing a series of pilotbuoys with flags on the rout, besides being prepared to nccompany the experimental cruise with his own vessel as a tender. The connecting wireb were placed in readiness at the Government pier in the harbour, and likewise at the Cape, where they run up the face ot the acclivity, which is 194 feet abu*e sea-mark. The weather was unfavourable on Tuesday, when it was intended to stnrt ; but on Wednesday morning, at half»p»st ten, the Goliah rode out to Dover pier, with a favouring sky and sea. The connexion of the thirty milc3 of wire enclosed in gutta percha was made good to three hundred yards of the same wire enclosed in a leaden tube, to protect it from being injuriously chafed hy the shingle on the beuch and in the shallow water. The Goliah then steamed forward at the rate of about three or four miles an hour, in a direct line to Cape Grisnez. The great drum was put in corresponding motion, and from it the wire was paid off over a roller at the stern of the vessel. At every two-hundred-and-twentieth yard, (one-sixteenth of a mile,) the square leaden clump*, weighing some twenty pounds, were rivetted to the wire, to sink it well to the bottom, and to assist in embedding it in the submarine soil, The depth of the water varies between one hundred and one hundred and eighty feet ; but at certain points there *re ridges and val.ieg which made the linking of the wire one ot careful management. Between two of these ridges, well known to sa lorSj and called by the French the Colbart and the Varne, is a steep valley surrounded by shifting sand-., many miles in length, "parallel to the shores ; aud in these sands as with the voracious Goodwins, ships encounter danger from losing their anchors, and fishermen lose their nets. The wire whs successfully plunged to the bottom, however, safe equally from ships' anchors, sailors' nets, or monsters ot the deep. The remainder of the rout was safely and Blowly traversed, and the Goliah reached thu Fiench coast about eight o'clock in the evening. In half tn hour the wire had been carried ashore and run up the face of the cliff, and messages had been carried mm end to end of the mre*~Spwtat9r, August 31,