On July 17, the ships set sail again for mid-ocean. The cable was spliced in fifteen hundred fathoms of water and again the ships started for opposite shores. Field was on the _Niagara_ headed toward Newfoundland. Scarcely any one looked for success. Field was the only man who kept up courage through this trying period. On August 5, 1858, he telegraphed the safe arrival of the ship at Newfoundland. The shore ends of the cable were laid and on August 16 a message from Queen Victoria of England to President Buchanan flashed under the sea. There was great excitement everywhere. The two worlds had been tied together with a strange electric nerve.
On the evening of the first of September a great ovation was tendered Field in New York. National salutes were fired; processions were formed; there was an address by the mayor, and late at night a great banquet. While the banquet was in progress, the cable parted.
Everyone except Field was disheartened. He went to work again, and during the next five years, the long years of the Civil War, he labored unceasingly. A larger cable with a greater resisting force was made. On the twenty-third of July, 1865, the steamship _Great Eastern_ began another attempt to lay the cable. When it was within six hundred miles of Newfoundland, the cable parted again. For nine days attempts were made, in two and a half miles of water, to grapple the cable, splice it, and continue the work of laying it. Three times the cable was grappled, but the apparatus on the ship was not strong enough to hoist it aboard. Still Field never faltered. Another British company was formed and another cable was constructed. The _Great Eastern_ was again loaded and on July 13, a Friday, set sail westward laying the cable. After an uncertain voyage of two weeks the _Great Eastern_ arrived at Newfoundland, and the undertaking had again been successfully accomplished. Field telegraphed his arrival as follows: "_Hearts Content, July 27, 1866_. We arrived here at nine o'clock this morning. All well. Thank God, the cable is laid, and is in perfect working order. CYRUS W. FIELD."
Twelve years of unfaltering perseverance had won. Honors were heaped upon Field. Congress voted him a gold medal and the thanks of the nation. The prime minister of Great Britain declared that only the fact of his being the citizen of another nation prevented his receiving the highest honors in the power of the British government to bestow. The Paris "Exposition Universelle" of 1867 honored him with the Grand Medal, the highest prize it had to give.