Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement/Canning, Samuel
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.]