Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 1.djvu/332

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Canning
312
Capel

Campbell (b. 1889), grandson of his elder brother.

There are portraits of Campbell-Bannerman in the National Liberal Club, by Mr. John Colin Forbes; in the Reform Club, by Mr. J. H. F. Bacon, A.R.A.; and in the National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh, by Sir James Guthrie, P.R.S.A.; all were painted while he was prime minister. A monument to him was voted by parliament. It was placed in Westminster Abbey in 1912; the design includes a bust by Mr. Paul Raphael Montford, who has since been commissioned to execute a full-length statue, to be erected at Stirling.

[Private information; personal knowledge; The Times, 23 April 1908; Lucy's Diaries of Parliament; Holland's Duke of Devonshire, 1911; Hansard's Debates.]

P.


CANNING, Sir SAMUEL (1823–1908), a pioneer of submarine telegraphy, born at Ogbourne St. Andrew, Wiltshire, on 21 July 1823, was son of Robert Canning of that place by his wife Frances Hyde. Educated at Salisbury, he gained his first engineering experience (1844–9) as assistant to Messrs. Locke & Errington on the Great Western railway extensions, and as resident engineer on the Liverpool, Ormskirk and Preston railway. From railway work he turned in 1852 to submarine telegraphy, and entering the service of Messrs. Glass & Elliot, laid in 1855–6 his first cable that connecting Cape Breton Island with Newfoundland.

In 1857 he assisted (Sir) Charles Bright [q. v. Suppl. I] in the construction and laying of the first Atlantic cable, and he was on board H.M.S. Agamemnon during the submergence of the cable in 1857 and 1858. Subsequently until 1865 he laid, while in the service of Messrs Glass, Elliot & Company, cables in the deep waters of the Mediterranean and other seas.

When the Telegraph Construction and Maintenance Company was formed in 1865, Canning was appointed its chief engineer, and in that capacity had charge of the manufacture and laying of the Atlantic cables of 1865 and 1866, for which the company were the contractors. This work involved the preparation and fitting-out of the Great Eastern. On 2 Aug. 1865 the cable broke in 2000 fathoms of water.

After a second cable had been successfully laid by the Great Eastern (13–27 July 1866) Canning set to work to recover the broken cable, using special grappling machinery, which he devised for the purpose. After several failures the cable was eventually recovered on 2 Sept. 1866. For these services he was knighted in 1866; the King of Portugal conferred upon him the Order of St. Jago d'Espada, and the Liverpool chamber of commerce presented him with a gold medal. In 1869 he laid the French Atlantic cable between Brest and Duxbury, Massachusetts. After his retirement from the service of the Telegraph Construction Company, he practised as a consulting engineer in matters connected with telegraphy, and, among other work, superintended the laying of the Marseilles-Algiers and other cables for the India Rubber, Gutta Percha and Telegraph Works Company, acting later as adviser to the West Indian and Panama and other telegraph companies. He was a member both of the Institution of Civil Engineers (from 1 Feb. 1876) and of that of Electrical Engineers. He died at 1 Inverness Gardens, Kensington, on 24 Sept. 1908, and was buried in Kensal Green cemetery. He married in 1859 Elizabeth Anne (d. 1909), daughter of W. H. Gale of Grately, Hampshire, by whom he had three sons and three daughters.

His portrait in oils, by Miss B. Bright, is in the possession of his only surviving daughter, Mrs. Morris.

[The Times, 26 Sept. 1908; Minutes of Proc. Inst. Civ. Eng. clxxv. 316; C. Bright, Submarine Telegraphs, 1898; private information.]

W. F. S.


CAPEL, THOMAS JOHN (1836–1911), Roman catholic prelate, born at Ardmore, county Waterford, on 28 Oct. 1836, was eldest son and second child in a family of two sons and four daughters of John Capel by his wife Mary Fitzgerald, daughter of an Irish farmer. Both parents were rigid catholics and cultivated exclusively a catholic circle of friends. The father after some years in the royal navy joined the coastguard service, and was long stationed at Hastings. There the son Thomas was educated by a priest on duty in the town, who noticed his promise. At the priest's suggestion the boy passed into the charge of Father John Melville Glenie, who conducted a school for catholics at Hammersmith. There Capel took part in 1854 in the foundation of St. Mary's Normal College, Hammersmith, of which in 1856 he was made vice-principal. In 1860 he was ordained by Cardinal Wiseman, but owing to delicate health he went in the same year to reside at Pau, in the south of France. There he established a mission for English-speaking catholics, of which he became chaplain, and he formed friendly relations with many English