Overall: 28cm (11in) x 38cm (15in)
Oil on board. HMS Agamemnon listing to port in an Atlantic storm during the 1858 cable laying expedition linking Great Britain and the United States by telegraph. Unsigned but painted by Henry Clifford, civil engineer. Board: 20cm x 30cm. Framed and glazed.
In the 19th century transatlantic cable laying expeditions were newsworthy events. Clifford’s dual talents as the engineer responsible for paying out the cables, and his skill as an artist trained in mechanical drawing, proved a valuable asset to the Illustrated London News and other journals in their reportage. Moreover Clifford’s drawings of the ship in the storm were used as the basis for a series of woodcuts published in the Illustrated London News Supplement dated 31 July 1858.
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Earlier that year the Atlantic Telegraph Company hired four ships to lay the submarine telegraph cable from Great Britain to Newfoundland. The two primary ships were the USS Niagara and HMS Agamemnon (1845). The 91-gun Agamemnon was fresh from war service in the Black Sea, bombarding Russian forces at Sebastopol and Kinburn. She featured a retractable propeller and telescopic funnel to aid her sailing qualities when not under steam. HMS Valorous and HMS Gorgon were used as escort vessels. Owing to the fact that there was no ship at the time that could bear the entire weight of the telegraph cable, the load was divided between the Niagara and Agamemnon with the intention of splicing the two ends in mid-Atlantic.
The two ships spent April and half of May loading cable and rehearsing a mid-ocean splice in the Bay of Biscay, before departing for their starting point on 10 June. A violent storm arose three days later and lasted for 10 days. Niagara rode it out without much trouble, but the smaller Agamemnon suffered severely. Top heavy with 250 tons of cable on her forward upper deck and down by the bow, the ship rolled violently, reporters on board estimating more than 30 degrees to each side. The heavy seas caused additional coal stowed in the stern in large bags to break loose, while the lower coil of cable had worked itself loose and resembled ‘a cargo of live eels’. The weather finally moderated on 22 June and Agamemnon reached the mid ocean rendezvous three days later. With 45 men injured and one hundred miles (160 km) of cable in a ‘laocoönian tangle’, the cable ends were nevertheless spliced. Agamemnon sailed to Ireland and the Niagara to Newfoundland, each laying the cable along the way. After further challenges both ships landed the cable on 5 August, but due to the cable's flawed design, it worked only for three weeks before failing.
Henry Clifford (1821-1905) was born in Hull, the son of corn merchant William Clifford. Though artistically ambitious, his father urged him to pursue a more practical trade, and in 1838 he took up an engineering apprenticeship in Aberdeen. He was later employed as a mechanical engineer at the Cyclops Foundry in Hull. In 1853 the marriage of his cousin, a Miss Taylor, to the engineer Sir Charles Bright, brought him an introduction to the Atlantic Telegraph Company and subsequent participation in laying the first telegraph cables across the Atlantic Ocean. He never gave up on his artistic ambitions and painted maritime scenes of the cable-laying expeditions in which he was involved, including the epic storm of June 1858. After the failure of the 1858 cable Clifford joined Glass Elliot & Company, one of the earliest cable manufacturers. He subsequently worked on laying cables in the Mediterranean, the artistic results of which are held in the Clifford collection of National Maritime Museum. In the course of his career Clifford was associated with several distinguished engineers making him a respected authority on their work. He died a rich man in Lewisham.