Description

Robert Charles Dudley’s Interior of One of the Tanks on Board the Great Eastern: The Cable Passing Out (1865–66) captures a moment inside one of the colossal cable tanks aboard the steamship Great Eastern. Rendered in watercolor over graphite with touches of gouache, the scene immerses the viewer in the immense industrial space, where coiled telegraphic cable—intended for transatlantic communication—is carefully being fed out. Through muted tones and detailed precision, Dudley evokes both the scale of technological ambition and the quiet intensity of human endeavor beneath the Atlantic’s surface.