IN PORT AGAIN.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 183, 4 August 1932, Page 8

IN PORT AGAIN.

CABLE SHIP RECORDER. ABSENCE OF FOURTEEN WEEKS ARDUOUS WORK IN TASMAN. After an absence from Auckland of over 14 weeks, the cable eteamer Recorder, still, despite her change of name, familiarly known as the Iris, returned to port this afternoon, and went to her moorings at Devouport. The work of transferring from Wellington to Auckland the Xew Zealand end of the cable that previously linked Sydney and Wellington proved one of the longest and most tedious jobs ever undertaken by the ship. Adverse weather made the work considerably longer than anticipated.

The Kecorder sailed from Auckland on the afternoon of March 24, the day before Good Friday.

Fatality at Muriwai.

The work of getting the cable ashore at Muriwai proved a most difficult operation, and, unfortunately, was not accomplished without loss of life. On the morning of Sunday, April 17, the Recorder's whaleboat, in which four men were endeavouring to land the shore end of the cable,. capsized in the surf, and one of the sailors, Mr. J. Tyrrel, was drowned. The other three sailors succeeded in getting ashore with the aid of a life-line. Mr. Tyrrel's body was later recovered froni the surf. Prior to the fatality an attempt had' been made to get a lino ashore by means of a rocket apparatus, but this had beeu unsuccessful. After the accident, an aeroplane, piloted by Mr. D. M. Allan, the Auckland Aero Club's instructor, was used for taking a light line through the breakers, but th 6 light line broke when a heavier line was being brought in. Later the aeroplane returned to the beach, and it was by this means that the line to haul the cable was'eventually got ashore. Although the ship hae been absent fpr so long she will not remain many days in port, as she is to sail again shortly for the vicinity of Norfolk Island, where she is to effect repairs to the, Norfolk Island-Sydney cable. Deep Sea " Fishing." To people who know little of ships and navigation, the work- of tinkering with deep-sea cables is of great interest. For a ship to be able to steam hundreds of miles out to sea, stop on a patch of water that looks no different from any other, let down a small grapnel, and pick up, at a depth of several thousand

feet, a cable lying on the ocean bed seems to them a performance that is well out ,of the ordinary. Even the men on the ship themselves, although some of them may not admit it, feci a sense of satisfaction when a cable is " hooked " without undue delay. The picking up of a cable in deep water was graphically described by one of the Recorder's officers recently. "You are going along gently, wondering just when you'll pick the cable up," he said. "The dynoinometer strain is going up and down with the rise and fall of the ship, and you think to yourself, 'It's about time we had that cable, 5 and all of a sudden she ceases to have that range. The dynamometer strain stops following the motion of the ship. It begins to stand still, lou feel the grapnel rope. She's like a bar. Hullo, you say, there's something here. You put on speed gently, and as soon as she goes forward the dynamometer strain suddenly jerks up, up, up. That's all you want. It's 'stop everything.' You ve hooked your cable." ° -In shallow water, anything up to 600ffc, the procedure is somewhat different. The grapnel ropo leads in the same way from the winding drum past the dynamometer, which indicates the tension, and up to the bow sheaves over which the grapnel hangs to the sea bottom. By sitting on the grapnel ropo a cable man can determine ahead of the dynamometer when the cable has been hooked. "You can feel the grapnel stumbling over the rocks, but when the cable is hooked it's a different 'feel' and the seat gets hard," explained one of the officers. "You look at the dynamometer and in a couple of minutes up and up she goes."

Different Types of Grapnels. If the Recorder is working over a hard or rock bottom a chain grapnel is used; if the bottom is soft a "flat-fish" or spear point grapnel fills the bill. When grapnelling for a cable the ship steams on a course that is calculated to take her across the cable at right angles at a speed of from three-quarters to one mile an hour. A greater speed would result in the grapnel being lifted above the sea bed. The grapnel rope will take a strain of about 18 tons, but it is very seldom, even when the cable is'being lifted to the surface, that the strain approaches anywhere near that figure.