Support the show and buy me a Coffee https://ko-fi.com/vicesandvolumesVisit the National Maritime Museum Ireland https://www.mariner.ie/In 1857, a copper wire left Valentia Island, Co. Kerry, bound for America. It did not quite arrive.The Atlantic telegraph cable was the most ambitious communications project in history — 2,600 miles of copper wrapped in Malaysian tree sap, coiled in a repurposed warship, aimed at Newfoundland from the very edge of Ireland. This episode follows the story in full: the garden party for the workers at a baronet's estate, the celebratory poem by Queen Victoria's favourite poet, the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland posting down to Kerry by carriage, Cyrus Field's speech on the beach at Valentia, and the moment — at 335 nautical miles — when the cable snapped. The official cause, as published in the Illustrated London News: a mechanic of, as they put it, insufficient intelligence.Nine years later, it was recovered from two and a half miles of water by Robert Halpin of Wicklow town — youngest of thirteen, went to sea at eleven, survived shipwrecks, Arctic storms, and the American Civil War before being brought low, ultimately, by a pair of nail scissors. His collection is at the National Maritime Museum, Dún Laoghaire.Features readings from the Illustrated London News, Vol. 31 (July–December 1857). Personal collection of the author.For additional information and sources please visit https://vicesandvolumes.com/

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“What did the council decide on item 42?” — answered with the speaker and the moment.

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