Making the Splice between the Shore End and the Ocean Cable
On the deck of the Great Eastern, the shore-end cable is spliced to the ocean cable as sailors and engineers gather among the masts and ropes. Full commentary ↓
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Making the Splice between the Shore End and the Ocean Cable is an oil painting by Robert Charles Dudley (ca. 1866) in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. It measures 57.8 × 84.5 cm.
In the pictureOn a ship's deck, thick masts and ropes cut across the picture, and dozens of people are gathered beneath them. In the middle, a few men handle a thick cable, while gentlemen in hats and sailors in shirtsleeves watch around them. A man has climbed the mast on the left. The museum's image is black and white.
BackgroundA thick, sturdy shore-end cable was used near the coast and a thin, long ocean cable in deep water, so the two had to be spliced together. If the joint failed, the whole effort failed, so it was a moment everyone on board watched. In this series, Dudley painted technical operations like this one as if they were the protagonists of the event.
Puzzle tipWith many straight lines from the masts and ropes, there are clues here despite the black and white. Set up the thick mast pieces as the vertical axis and place the bright shirts and dark clothing of the figures below. Fill in the hazy sky pieces of the background last. Hard (about 100 pieces) is a good fit.
- Artist
- British, 1826–1909
- Classification
- Paintings
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- 57.8 x 84.5 cm
- Credit line
- Gift of Cyrus W. Field, 1892
Source: The Metropolitan Museum of Art ↗
Stories about this work
- Dudley's Six Paintings of the 1866 Atlantic Cable, Made Aboard Ship
In 1866 the largest ship in the world laid a telegraph cable across the Atlantic. We read, in order, the six paintings left by an artist who sailed on the voyage.
