This hand-coloured lithograph depicts the Great Eastern (centre in upper vignette, right in lower vignette) with Albany (right in upper vignette, centre in lower) and Medway (left in both) dragging the Transatlantic cable of 1865 into place and heaving it up. The Great Eastern was highly successful at laying cable, because her great size enabled her to stow a great weight of cable. Her first attempt failed, however, when her paying-out gear jammed and the cable broke, after two-thirds of the crossing had been made. She finally succeeded in 1866. Later, she laid cables from England to France and Scandinavia, and in 1870 she laid the Suez-Aden-Bombay cable (‘Shipping Wonders of the World’, Vol. 2, pp. 1605-6).