An amazing 6 part doc on YouTube about this: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zmyBSrQodnI
Signal quality declined rapidly, slowing transmission to an almost unusable speed. The cable was destroyed after three weeks when Wildman Whitehouse applied excessive voltage to it while trying to achieve faster operation.
Damn. The first cable only lasted three weeks.
At least the second (eventually) and third had better success:
The second cable was laid in 1865 with improved material. It was laid from the ship SS Great Eastern, built by John Scott Russell and Isambard Kingdom Brunel and skippered by Sir James Anderson. More than halfway across, the cable broke, and after many rescue attempts, it was abandoned. In July 1866 a third cable was laid from The Anglo-American Cable house on the Telegraph Field, Foilhommerum. On July 13, Great Eastern steamed westward to Heart’s Content, Newfoundland, and on July 27 the successful connection was put into service. The 1865 cable was also retrieved and spliced, so two cables were in service.
