The Paying-out Machinery in the Stern of the Great Eastern

The Paying-out Machinery in the Stern of the Great Eastern is a watercolor by British artist Robert Charles Dudley. The work is available in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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.