Lightning Man_ The Accursed Life of Samuel F. B. Morse - Kenneth Silverman [193]
Morse remained on the Niagara as it steamed to Plymouth, flags at half-mast, there to await instructions from the Atlantic Telegraph Company. His leg injury proved to be far worse than he had thought. He had not simply abraded the skin below his knee, but had also bruised the bone. With the Niagara anchored in Plymouth harbor he was forced to stay in bed on his back, unable to sit up without pain.
After two weeks he managed to go up on deck, where he lay on some netting to watch target practice by warships anchored in the harbor.
Meanwhile the company’s directors met in London to discuss what to do next. Should they order new cable and immediately try again? Should they first improve the paying-out machinery? The company asked Morse to attend their meetings, but being hobbled he offered his views in a letter. He advised them to put off a second expedition until next year: with fall weather coming in, the Newfoundland coast would be blustery. Still convinced that no insurmountable obstacle existed, he reminded the directors that misfortune was to be expected in any great enterprise. The failure of the first trial provided a lesson in how God dispenses all things for good; it should be seen as “a providential interference to ensure final success.” For much had been learned from the attempt, and a postponement would give time for further experiment and more learning.
Having sent his recommendation, Morse waited impatiently to hear from the directors about their plans. Again and again they promised he would have their decision “tomorrow”: “So it goes; to-morrow, and to-morrow, but to-morrow never comes.” As it happened, the directors were deluged by advice and proposals, including an offer from a clairvoyant to divine the undersea location of broken cables. After more than three weeks in Plymouth harbor, Morse still had heard nothing from the company. Others on the Niagara grumbled, too: the alterations of the ship compelled officers and men to sleep, wash, and dress wherever they could. Increasingly restless, and longing to see Sarah and their children, Morse decided that if his slow-healing leg improved enough he would simply up and leave.
News from home deepened Morse’s frustration. A letter that Kendall had written from America six weeks earlier caught up with him. It described meetings in New York of representatives from the principal Morse lines, to work out a union for mutual protection. Members of such an alliance might pledge, for example, to connect their lines only with each other. Cyrus Field had attended the meeting before sailing to London to join the cable squadron.
Kendall gave Morse an unnerving report of Field’s behavior. In a “defiant tone,” he wrote, Field declared that his American Telegraph Company would not enter the union unless the other members purchased from him the patent for the Hughes telegraph, for $60,000. Field also alluded to the power his group would have by its exclusive connection to the transatlantic cable. It seemed evident to Kendall that Field hoped to divide the Morse companies and prevent them from uniting, weakening them so that they could not stand in the way of his ambitions. “This conviction is a serious drawback upon the satisfaction I should feel at the success of the Atlantic Cable,” he told Morse. “Indeed, I apprehend the utmost danger to all our Telegraph property from the power which success will place in the hands of these gentlemen.”
Morse was already peeved at Field’s London partners for making him “wait their convenience.” But Kendall’s letter revived all over again the nagging feeling, never put to rest, that for all the promised glory of the cable adventure, it was his duty to disengage himself from it. The owners of Morse lines