Focus on this artwork and discuss the Description.
Dudley's watercolor depicts a large piece of cable-laying machinery on the rear deck of the iron sail steamer SS Great Eastern. The machinery was used to lay (also referred to as "paying out") the first transatlantic undersea cable. Upon its completion in 1866, the cable allowed telegraph messages to be sent across the Atlantic; these took minutes to travel between North America and Europe as opposed to the 10 days it took for contemporary mail carriers to make the crossing.
SS Great Eastern Europe telegraph telegraph messages North America first transatlantic undersea cable