Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    A Thread Across the Ocean
    Unavailable
    A Thread Across the Ocean
    Unavailable
    A Thread Across the Ocean
    Audiobook6 hours

    A Thread Across the Ocean

    Written by John Steele Gordon

    Narrated by Scott Brick

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    Today, in a world in which news flashes around the globe in an instant, time lags are inconceivable. In the mid-nineteenth century, communication between the United States and Europe -- the center of world affairs -- was only as quick as the fastest ship could cross the Atlantic, making the United States isolated and vulnerable.
    But in 1866, the Old and New Worlds were united by the successful laying of a cable across the Atlantic. John Steele Gordon's book chronicles this extraordinary achievement -- the brainchild of American businessman Cyrus Field and one of the greatest engineering feats of the nineteenth century. An epic struggle, it required a decade of effort, numerous failed attempts, millions of dollars in capital, a near disaster at sea, the overcoming of seemingly insurmountable technological problems, and uncommon physical, financial, and intellectual courage. Bringing to life an overlooked story in the annals of technology, John Steele Gordon sheds fascinating new light on this American saga that literally changed the world.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateAug 27, 2003
    ISBN9781415912140
    Unavailable
    A Thread Across the Ocean
    Author

    John Steele Gordon

    John Steele Gordon is one of America's leading historians, specializing in business and financial history. A full-time writer for the last nineteen years, Gordon's articles have been published in, among others, Forbes, Forbes FYI, Worth, The New York Times Book Review, The New York Times's and The Wall Street Journal's Op-Ed pages, and The Washington Post's Book World and Outlook. A contributing editor at American Heritage magazine, he has written the "Business of America"column there since 1989. His book, The Business of America (Walker & Company, 2001) is a collection of those columns. A Thread Across the Ocean: The Heroic Story of the Transatlantic Cable (Walker & Company 2002) is Gordon's sixth book. His first book, Overlanding, about his experience driving a Land Rover from New York to Tierra del Fuego, Argentina??ine-month journey of 39,000 miles?? published by Harper & Row in 1975. It was followed by The Scarlet Woman of Wall Street, a history of Wall Street in the 1860?(Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1988), Hamilton's Blessing: The Extraordinary Life and Times of Our National Debt (Walker & Company, 1997), and The Great Game: The Emergence of Wall Street as a World Power, 1653-2000 (Scribner, 1999). John Steele Gordon can be heard frequently on Public Radio International's Marketplace, the daily business-news program heard on more than two hundred stations across the country. He has appeared on numerous other radio and television shows, including Business Center on CNBC, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer on PBS, The News with Brian Williams, and c-span's Booknotes with Brian Lamb. In addition, he has appeared in a number of television documentaries about American and economic history, including CNBC's The Great Game, based on his book, and Ric Burns's New York: A Documentary Film. John Steele Gordon lives in North Salem, New York. He is currently writing An Empire of Wealth: A History of the American Economy, to be published by HarperCollins.

    Related to A Thread Across the Ocean

    Related audiobooks

    Artists and Musicians For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Rags To Honest Riches

      Mar 26, 2019

      Rags To Honest Riches
      3 min read

    • Article

      TV, FILM & RADIO

      Sep 28, 2023

      TV, FILM & RADIO
      5 min read

    • Article

      Language Misconception

      Jan 22, 2019

      Language Misconception
      4 min read

    • Article

      The Pioneers Set Sail

      Jul 9, 2020

      The Pioneers Set Sail
      7 min read

    • Article

      The Pioneers Set Sail

      Jul 28, 2020

      The Pioneers Set Sail
      7 min read

    • Article

      Empire On The Brink

      Sep 28, 2023

      Empire On The Brink
      10 min read

    • Article

      All That Glitters

      Apr 16, 2020

      All That Glitters
      9 min read

    • Article

      Michael Wood On…

      Jan 23, 2020

      The start of a new decade is always a time for reflection, and what a crucial decade the 2020s will be. We now live in the Anthropocene, the human-made geological epoch that will leave its mark forever on our world, and the next 10 years will determi

      3 min read

    • Article

      Mayflower Myths

      Sep 10, 2020

      Mayflower Myths
      6 min read

    • Article

      Six More Books To Read

      Mar 19, 2020

      Jesse Owens wasn’t the only African-American athlete to travel from the US to take part in the 1936 Summer Olympics, hosted by Germany in the throes of Nazism. This account explores the lives of the 17 other such competitors: men and women who had to

      2 min read

    • Article

      Podcast What To Listen To…

      Dec 28, 2022

      Podcast What To Listen To…
      1 min read

    • Article

      Books In Brief

      Oct 20, 2020

      CHARLES A. KUPCHAN, OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, 464 PP., $29.95, OCTOBER 2020 U.S. PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP’S BRAND OF “AMERICA FIRST” ISOLATIONISM has, over the past four years, repelled much of the foreign-policy establishment and horrified U.S. allies

      5 min read

    • Article

      Apipeline Runs Through It

      Nov 16, 2022

      Allen Lane, 768pp, £35 Once it became apparent that oil was a better fuel for battleships than coal and that motor vehicles were here to stay, no prisoners were taken by those determined to exploit this gilt-edged resource. For instance Royal Dutch S

      1 min read

    • Article

      How the West Was Lost

      Sep 10, 2018

      How the West Was Lost
      9 min read

    • Article

      Why Were People So Keen To Join The Gold Rush?

      Apr 16, 2020

      Famine ravaged Ireland in the 1840s, which in the ensuing decades would cause half the population to leave or die. Meanwhile revolutions raged across continental Europe during the People’s Spring, with authorities responding ferociously, forcing many

      1 min read

    • Article

      BOOKS & PODCASTS

      Nov 25, 2021

      BOOKS & PODCASTS
      2 min read

    • Article

      Michael Wood On…

      Feb 20, 2020

      On 17 July 1897, shortly after Queen Victoria’s diamond jubilee, The Times published an extraordinary poem, on the same page as the queen’s letter to the people expressing gratitude for the surge of public affection. The poem was written by Rudyard K

      3 min read

    • Article

      BOOKS & PODCASTS

      Apr 15, 2021

      BOOKS & PODCASTS
      2 min read

    • Article

      One Giant Lie

      Sep 4, 2018

      One Giant Lie
      2 min read

    • Article

      A Global Legacy

      Mar 18, 2021

      Ireland has long been a country of emigrants. In particular the 19th and 20th centuries saw a huge dispersal, with around 8 million leaving between 1800 and 1920 for new lives in Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the US. Most often the stor

      2 min read

    • Article

      THE Radically INTERNATIONAL History of AMERICA’S BEST IDEA

      Jun 1, 2017

      The United States may have invented national parks—but the rest of the world helped perfect them. Now, generations later, that spirit of cooperation and competition might just be the thing that saves them.

      11 min read

    • Article

      The Coming Climate Crisis

      Jan 22, 2019

      The Coming Climate Crisis
      7 min read

    • Article

      Golden State of Mind

      Apr 23, 2020

      Golden State of Mind
      8 min read

    • Article

      This Too Shall Pass

      Feb 9, 2018

      We the People's fickle attention span was captured the other day by a dramatic fall in stock indices -- the Dow Jones Industrial Average, Standard & Poor's 500 Index, the NASDAQ composite, the Russell 2000 index of smaller companies. ... All went dow

      2 min read

    • Article

      “England Was Seen As A Pariah State, Ruled By Regicidal Rebels Who’d Publicly Executed Their King”

      Sep 30, 2021

      ON THE HistoryExtra PODCAST Devil-Land: England Under Siege 1588-1688 by Clare Jackson (Allen Lane, 688 pages, £35) Ellie CawtHorne: Devil-Land looks at England from 1588 to 1688. Why do you think this is such a fascinating 100-year period of English

      9 min read

    • Article

      How A Nation Desperate For Wealth Fell Prey To ‘Gold Fever’

      May 12, 2021

      Brian Castner deftly recounts the 1890s Klondike Gold Rush in vivid detail, pointing out that many would-be prospectors came totally unprepared.

      3 min read

    • Article

      Welcome

      Jun 10, 2022

      Welcome
      1 min read

    • Article

      The Voyage That Made America?

      Sep 3, 2020

      The Voyage That Made America?
      9 min read

    • Article

      Massive Leak Of US Intelligence Documents, Armed Conflict In Sudan And A Furry Menace

      Apr 21, 2023

      A major new cache of classified US military documents emerged last week, revealing sensitive western intelligence in areas such as the Ukraine war, Russia and Chinese affairs. But, just as astonishing as the information within the documents was the s

      2 min read

    Reviews for A Thread Across the Ocean

    4/5

    52 ratings3 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      This is an engaging story about the construction of the first transatlantic cable. The author provides a compelling portrait of the times and of the key personalities involved. It serves as a great introduction to a fascinating period in which the world instantaneously got much smaller.
    • 4/5
      This is an engaging little book about the construction of the first transatlantic cable. The book skillfully walks the tightrope between too much background so the story gets lost, and not enough so the reader doesn't understand the issues. Readers who find themselves saying, "let's get to the job!" in books about construction of critical historical projects should not have that sense in this book. Nonetheless, the author provides a compelling portrait of the times and of the key personalities involved, so that I never lost interest. There is some glossing over the opposition to this project, but it will serve as a great introduction to this fascinating period in which the world instantaneously got much smaller.
    • 4/5
      A popular and easy-reading history of the transatlantic cable. As befits an author, John Steele Gordon, who writes business history, the central figure is Cyrus Field, the American who didn’t know anything about telegraphy or cable-laying or electrical technology, but knew a good idea when he heard one and knew how to raise money. Since I’m more interested in the technical aspect of things, I was prepared for disappointment; but the story of Mr. Field’s adventures among the world’s bankers and industrialists trying to raise cash are well told. And the other characters are there – Isambard Kingdom Brunel, who built the Great Eastern, a ship that was never a success as an ocean liner but proved excellent at laying cable; William Thomson, later Lord Kelvin; and many other minor but still interesting personalities.
      Field’s first attempts at laying the cable were failures – it parted or was lost off the stern when the brakes failed. Finally, in 1857, he got a cable across – from Ireland to Newfoundland. The fist message was from Queen Victoria to President Franklin Pierce. Joy was unrestrained; newspapers trumpeted that the cable would put an end to war because countries could communicate rapidly, and so forth. The cable lasted a week before going dead. (In a interesting footnote, Gordon points out that a number of people thought the whole thing was a fraud - a conspiracy to sell shares in the cable company – and compares this to people who think the Apollo landings were a hoax).
      However, in the one week the cable was operating, the British Government used the cable to countermand orders for two regiments to board ship at Halifax and sail for India. The savings were estimated to be between £50000 and £60000. This was about one-seventh the cost of laying the cable. Thus that one week of operation was enough to demonstrate a cable’s utility.
      Unfortunately, before Field could raise enough money to try again, things got a little unsettled in the United States and a second attempt, with a better insulated and more heavily armored cable, couldn’t be made until 1865. This time the Great Eastern was within 600 miles of Newfoundland when the cable snapped and disappeared into the Atlantic. The Great Eastern had five miles of wire rope on board, and it was decided to try and grapple the cable. Rather surprisingly, this was successful – at least the grapple hooked something believed to be the cable. Unfortunately the wire was not continuous but spliced from hundred-fathom links, and each time the cable was lifted one of the splices parted. Finally when there was not enough wire left to try again the Great Eastern had to head for home.Field plunged into the breach once more, trying to get enough funding for another attempt in 1866 – and he did. This time everything went smoothly and the cable was hauled ashore in Newfoundland (well, not everything went smoothly; it turned out that the cable from Newfoundland to Nova Scotia had snapped after fouling a anchor, so that one had to be lifted and repaired before the news could be telegraphed to New York). Finally, the Great Eastern headed back out to sea, successfully grappled and lifted the 1865 cable, spliced it, and landed it back in Newfoundland as well. Thus there were now two working Atlantic cables.
      It took a while before the cables became successful; the initial rate was $10/word with a ten word minimum (that’s about $500 a word in current money). However, once competition from a French company started, rates began to drop. By 1870, Wall Street and London brokers were each spending about $1M/year on cable charges.
      Quite entertaining and informative and a quick read – took me 1 day worth a bus commuting. I now want to read more about the Great Eastern.