An Afternoon Aboard the Niagara

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AN AFTERNOON ABOARD THE NIAGARA.

These fine days, one of the principal amusements of the Brooklyn and New York public, and of strangers from neighboring and distant parts also, seems to be found at the Navy Yard at this station.

“Have you visited the Niagara yet?”¹ will be asked you a dozen times a day. And, in many directions, are now to be seen “pieces of the cable,” sometimes in the windows of the shops, and sometimes by persons in a crowd, offering it for sale in small bits.

Wishing to be up the tenor of the times, we joined the crowd that made a huge human current, men and women, yesterday afternoon, pouring along all the streets that led toward the Navy Yard, and through the gate there, hour after hour. The day was so pleasant, that many thousand people (and indeed for three or four days past it has been the same,) must have “turned out,” for the purpose of making this visit. The ladies were largely in the predominance. Bonnets and hoops were to be seen in all directions, and many a man had under convoy two or three, and occasionally might be seen one who had in his charge five or six of the “last best gift!” Indeed the whole Navy Yard, and all that to it appertains, seemed to be yielded up to them. They dotted it in all directions, and made it look like a variegated garden of flowers. Crowds of them were ferried over in the flat-boat that passes people to and from the receiving ship North Carolina; and streams were constantly going up the entrance plank to the Niagara, or down the adjoining one which served for the exit.

After gaining the deck of the now world celebrated vessel, the first thing that attracts notice is an immense circular space, thirty feet in diameter, amidships, where the cable was coiled, and where several score miles of it still lay in coil. Yesterday they were transferring it to a small coaster that was hauled alongside, and we could thus get a faint idea of the process of “paying it out,” although this time over the side of the ship instead of aft, by complicated machinery, as was done when the telegraph was laid.

We stood some time by the enclosure of the circular space we allude to, watching the line as it rose, coil after coil, sticky and shiny with the black tar. Here and there the perfect soundness of the cable seemed to be injured in its protecting covering, and broken and frayed somewhat; we should certainly think this would make the already laid cable likely to be injured or corroded yet, before long, to a degree that would prevent its working. However, it is success enough to have demonstrated that the oceanic telegraph will work at all.

Probably the greatest curiosity aboard the Niagara is the machinery for paying out the cable, which is yet all standing there, as complete as during the time it was used. It was far too complicated and wonderful for our unproficient eyes—involving many combinations of wheels, and joints, and cogs, and chains, and rods, and ropes, and nuts and purchases, and checks, that were almost enough to put an ordinary man in despair, we should say, of ever getting the hang of it.

Then passing along, we stood on the ship, aft, and looked at the immense wheel, fixed outside, projecting away out from her stern, where the line passed over and was dropped into the water. We thought it a happy idea to leave all these things in their rough and rusty condition, just as they were when the work was triumphantly done—instead of polishing and fixing everything up, for parlor show, as some would have done. There is more honor in the toil-worn appearance of this ship as she is now, than there will ever be in her days of nicety, all rubbed and scrubbed as she may be.

We went down in the officers’ cabins; they are in the condition of a house, on the morning of the first of May, just after the carts have been all loaded, and nothing remains but dust and confusion. The men’s quarters pretty much the same. All idea of naval etiquette seemed to have been abandoned, and the whole run of the vessel given up to the public, especially the women. There they were, peering around, descending impossible gang ways, going up wonderful ladders, and often dabbing their fair petticoats with tar. The engine-room of this ship is also perhaps of the world. Indeed we doubt very much whether any of the ancient seven could really come up to this, and what it involves—power, ability, science, travel, the connection of continents, the reduction to a spot of all ideas of distances. At this place too, the immense quantity and complication of the machinery make confusion in the mind of an outsider like us, who only goes among such works to stare and be amazed, and can’t tell the name or purpose of a single thing.

Between decks there were also other coils of the cable, similar to the one above. We saw how securely it must have been stowed, and why it was during the frightful storm of the second attempt it was kept all safe.

Indeed, a visit to this ship, as she now lies close alongside the wharf at the Navy Yard, will only add to the public admiration at this most bold and successful attempt of modern times—and increase the air of marvellousness and romance that already envelopes the whole affair, and makes a man sometimes stop and question himself whether the whole thing is really a fact or no!

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