Cyrus Field, American businessman and financier, set his sights on laying the first transatlantic underwater telegraph cable after having been contacted by
Frederic Newton Gisborne who attempted to connect
St. John's, Newfoundland to
New York City, but failed due to lack of funding. After inquiring about the feasibility of a transatlantic underwater cable to Lieutenant
Matthew Fontaine Maury of the
U.S. Navy, Field formed an agreement with the Englishmen
John Watkins Brett and
Charles Tilston Bright to create the Atlantic Telegraph Company. It was
incorporated in December, 1856 with £350,000
capital, raised principally in
London,
Liverpool,
Manchester, and
Glasgow. The
board of directors was composed of eighteen members from the United Kingdom, nine from the United States, and three from Canada. The original three projectors were joined by
E.O.W. Whitehouse, who oversaw the manufacturing of the cables as chief
electrician.
Curtis M. Lampson served as vice-chairman for over a decade. The board recruited the physicist
William Thomson (later Lord Kelvin), who had publicly disputed some of Whitehouse's claims. The two had a tense relationship before Whitehouse was dismissed when the first cable failed in 1858. Later that year, another attempt was made to connect North America and Europe. This attempt was completed on August 5, 1858 and was celebrated by an exchange of messages between
Queen Victoria of England and
President Buchanan of the United States using the new cable line. When a second cable, under Thomson's supervision, was proposed, the Admiralty lent the hulks of
HMS Amethyst and
HMS Iris to the company in 1864, both ships were then extensively modified in 1865 for ferrying the Atlantic cable from the works at Enderby's wharf, in East Greenwich, London, to
Great Eastern at her Sheerness mooring. A new subsidiary company, the
Telegraph Construction and Maintenance Company, under the chairmanship of John Pender was formed to execute the new venture. The cable was coiled down into great cylindrical tanks at the wharf before being fed into
Great Eastern.
Amethyst and
Iris transferred the 2,500 miles (4,022 km) of cable to
Great Eastern, beginning in February 1865, The next expedition in 1866 was a success, also succeeding in recovering the lost second cable. The service generated revenues of £1,000 in its first day of operation. The approximate price to send a telegram was: one word, one mile (1.6 km) = $0.0003809. The Atlantic Telegraph Company operated the only two
trans-Atlantic cables without competition until 1869, when a French cable was laid. Shortly after this company was established, an agreement was made to coordinate pricing of telegraph services and share revenues, effectively combining the French and Anglo-American interests into one combine. A second French company,
compagnie française du télégraphe de Paris à New-York, was established in 1879. ==Anglo-American Telegraph Company==